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MY   STUDY  WINDOWS. 


BY 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  A.  M., 

PROFESSOR  OF  BELLES-LETTRES  IN  HARVARD  COLLEGE. 


BOSTON: 

JAMES   R.    OSGOOD   AND   COMPANY, 

LATE  TICKNOR  &  FIELDS,  AND  FIELDS,  OSGOOD,  &  Co. 

1871. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1871, 

BY    JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL, 
in  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS:  WELCH,  BIGELOW,  &  Co., 
CAMBRIDGE. 


PS 
2 

A\ 


PREFATORY    NOTE. 


~\  /TY  former  volume  of  Essays  has  been  so  kindly 
received  that  I  am  emboldened  to  make  an 
other  and  more  miscellaneous  collection.  The  papers 
here  gathered  have  been  written  at  intervals  during  the 
last  fifteen  years,  and  I  knew  no  way  so  effectual  to  rid 
my  mind  of  them  and  make  ready  for  a  new  departure, 
as  this  of  shutting  them  between  two  covers  where 
they  can  haunt  me,  at  least,  no  more.  I  should  have 
preferred  a  simpler  title,  but  publishers  nowadays  are 
inexorable  on  this  point,  and  I  was  too  much  occupied 
for  happiness  of  choice.  That  which  I  have  desperately 
snatched  is  meant  to  imply  both  the  books  within  and 
the  world  without,  and  perhaps  may  pass  muster  in  the 
case  of  one  who  has  always  found  his  most  fruitful 
study  in  the  open  air. 


28COG6 


TO 

PROFESSOR    F.   J.   CHILD. 

MY  DEAR  CHILD, — 

You  were  good  enough  to  like  my  Essay  on  Chaucer 
(about  whom  you  know  so  much  more  than  I),  and  I  shall 
accordingly  so  far  presume  upon  our  long  friendship  as  to 
inscribe  the  volume  containing  it  with  your  name. 
Always  heartily  yours, 

J.  R.  LOWELL. 

CAMBRIDGE,  Christmas,  1870. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

MY  GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE 1 

A  GOOD  WORD  FOR  WINTER    .        .        .                 .  24 

ON  A  CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS        .        .  54 

A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER 83 

CARLTLE 115 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 150 

THE  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL       .  178 

THOREAU 193 

SWINBURNE'S  TRAGEDIES         .        .        .        .        .        .210 

CHAUCER 227 

LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS 290 

EMERSON,  THE  LECTURER 375 

POPE                                                                                  .  385 


MY  GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE. 


ONE  of  the  most  delightful  books  in  my  father's 
library  was  White's  Natural  History  of  Selborne. 
For  me  it  has  rather  gained  in  charm  with  years.  I  used 
to  read  it  without  knowing  the  secret  of  the  pleasure  I 
found  in  it,  but  as  I  grow  older  I  begin  to  detect  some  of 
the  simple  expedients  of  this  natural  magic.  Open  the 
book  where  you  will,  it  takes  you  out  of  doors.  In  our 
broiling  July  weather  one  can  walk  out  with  this  genially 
garrulous  Fellow  of  Oriel  and  find  refreshment  instead  of 
fatigue.  You  have  no  trouble  in  keeping  abreast  of  him 
as  he  ambles  along  on  his  hobby-horse,  now  pointing  to  a 
pretty  view,  now  stopping  to  watch  the  motions  of  a  bird 
or  an  insect,  or  to  bag  a  specimen  for  the  Honourable 
Daines  Barrington  or  Mr.  Pennant.  In  simplicity  of 
taste  and  natural  refinement  he  reminds  one  of  Walton ; 
in  tenderness  toward  what  he  would  have  called  the  brute 
creation,  of  Cowper.  I  do  not  know  whether  his  descrip 
tions  of  scenery  are  good  or  not,  but  they  have  made  me 
familiar  with  his  neighborhood.  Since  1  first  read  him, 
I  have  walked  over  some  of  his  favorite  haunts,  but  I 
still  see  them  through  his  eyes  rather  than  by  any  recol 
lection  of  actual  and  personal  vision.  The  book  has  also 
the  delightfulness  of  absolute  leisure.  Mr.  White  seems 
never  to  have  had  any  harder  work  to  do  than  to  study 
the  habits  of  his  feathered  fellow-townsfolk,  or  to  watch 
the  ripening  of  his  peaches  on  the  wall.  His  volumes  are 
the  journal  of  Adam  in  Paradise, 

1  A 


2  MY   GARDEN   ACQUAINTANCE. 

"  Annihilating  nil  that 's  made 
To  a  green  thought  in  a  green  shade." 

It  is  positive  rest  only  to  look  into  that  garden  of  his. 
It  is  vastly  better  than  to 

"  See  great  Diocletian  walk 
In  the  Salonian  garden's  noble  shade," 

for  thither  ambassadors  intrude  to  bring  with  them  the 
noises  of  Home,  while  here  the  world  has  no  entrance. 
No  rumor  of  the  revolt  of  the  American  Colonies  seems 
to  have  reached  him.  "  The  natural  term  of  an  hog's 
life  "  has  more  interest  for  him  than  that  of  an  empire. 
Burgoyne  may  surrender  and  welcome  ;  of  what  conse 
quence  is  that  compared  with  the  fact  that  we  can  explain 
the  odd  tumbling  of  rooks  in  the  air  by  their  turning  over 
"  to  scratch  themselves  with  one  claw  "  1  All  the  couriers 
in  Europe  spurring  rowel-deep  make  no  stir  in  Mr. 
White's  little  Chartreuse  ;  but  the  arrival  of  the  house- 
martin  a  day  earlier  or  later  than  last  year  is  a  piece  of 
news  worth  sending  express  to  all  his  correspondents. 

Another  secret  charm  of  this  book  is  its  inadvertent 
Immor,  so  much  the  more  .delicious  because  unsuspected 
by  the  author.  How  pleasant  is  his  innocent  vanity  in 
adding  to  the  list  of  the  British,  and  still  more  of  the 
Selbornian,  fauna  !  I  believe  he  would  gladly  have  con 
sented  to  be  eaten  by  a  tiger  or  a  crocodile,  if  by  that 
means  the  occasional  presence  within  the  parish  limits  of 
either  of  these  anthropophagous  brutes  could  have  been 
established.  He  brags  of  no  fine  society,  but  is  plainly  a 
little  elated  by  "  having  considerable  acquaintance  with 
a  tame  brown  owl."  Most  of  us  have  known  our  share 
of  owls,  bxit  few  can  boast  of  intimacy  with  a  feathered 
one.  The  great  events  of  Mr.  White's  life,  too,  have  that 
disproportionate  importance  which  is  always  humorous. 
To  think  of  his  hands  having  actually  been  thought 
worthy  (as  neither  Willoughby's  nor  Ray's  were)  to  hold 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  3 

a  stilted  plover,  the  Charadrius  himantopus,  with  no  back 
toe,  and  therefore  "liable,  in  speculation,  to  perpetual 
vacillations  "  !  I  wonder,  by  the  way,  if  metaphysicians 
have  no  hind  toes.  In  1770  he  makes  the  acquaintance 
in  Sussex  of  "  an  old  family  tortoise,"  which  had  then 
been  domesticated  for  thirty  years.  It  is  clear  that  he 
fell  in  love  with  it  at  first  sight.  We  have  no  means  of 
tracing  the  growth  of  his  passion;  but  in  1780  we  find 
him  eloping  with  its  object  in  a  post-chaise.  "  The  rattle 
and  hurry  of  the  journey  so  perfectly  roused  it  that,  when 
I  turned  it  out  in  a  border,  it  walked  twice  down  to  the 
bottom  of  my  garden."  It  reads  like  a  Court  Journal : 
"  Yesterday  morning  H.  R.  H.  the  Princess  Alice  took  an 
airing  of  half  an  hour  on  the  terrace  of  Windsor  Castle." 
This  tortoise  might  have  been  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Society,  if  he  could  have  condescended  to  so  ignoble  an 
ambition.  It  had  but  just  been  discovered  that  a  surface 
inclined  at  a  certain  angle  with  the  plane  of  the  horizon 
took  more  of  the  sun's  rays.  The  tortoise  had  always 
known  this  (though -he  unostentatiously  made  no  parade 
of  it),  and  used  accordingly  to  tilt  himself  up  against  the 
garden- wall  in  the  autumn.  He  seems  to  have  been  more 
of  a  philosopher  than  eve'n  Mr.  White  himself,  caring  for 
nothing  but  to  get  under  a  cabbage-leaf  when  it  rained, 
or  the  sun  was  too  hot,  and  to  bury  himself  alive  before 
frost,  —  a  four-footed  Diogenes,  who  carried  his  tub  on 
his  back. 

There  are  moods  in  which  this  kind  of  history  is  infi 
nitely  refreshing.  These  creatures  whom  we  affect  to 
look  down  upon  as  the  drudges  of  instinct  are  members 
of  a  commonwealth  whose  constitution  rests  on  immov 
able  bases.  Never  any  need  of  reconstruction  there  ! 
They  never  dream  of  settling  it  by  vote  that  eight  hours 
are  equal  to  ten,  or  that  one  creature  is  as  clever  as  an 
other  and  no  more.  They  do  not  use  their  poor  wits  in 


4  MY    GARDEN   ACQUAINTANCE. 

regulating  God's  clocks,  nor  think  they  cannot  go  astray 
so  long  as  they  carry  their  guide-board  about  with  them, 

a  delusion  we  often  practise  upon  ourselves  with  our 

high  and  mighty  reason,  that  admirable  finger-post  which 
points  every  way  and  always  right.  It  is  good  for  us  now 
and  then  to  converse  with  a  world  like  Mr.  White's,  where 
Man  is  the  least  important  of  animals.  But  one  who, 
like  me,  has  always  lived  in  the  country  and  always  on. 
the  same  spot,  is  drawn  to  his  book  by  other  occult  sym 
pathies.  Do  we  not  share  his  indignation  at  that  stupid 
Martin  who  had  graduated  his  thermometer  no  lower 
than  4°  above  zero  of  Fahrenheit,  so  that  in  the  coldest 
weather  ever  known  the  mercury  basely  absconded  into 
the  bulb,  and  left  us  to  see  the  victory  slip  through  our 
fingers  just  as  they  were  closing  upon  it  ?  No  man,  I 
suspect,  ever  lived  long  in  the  country  without  being 
bitten  by  these  meteorological  ambitions.  He  likes  to 
be  hotter  and  colder,  to  have  been  more  deeply  snowed 
up,  to  have  more  trees  and  larger  blown  down  than  his 
neighbors.  With  us  descendants  of  the  Puritans  espe 
cially,  these  weather-competitions  supply  the  abnegated 
excitement  of  the  race-course.  Men  learn  to  value  ther 
mometers  of  the  true  imaginative  temperament,  capable 
of  prodigious  elations  and  corresponding  dejections.  The 
other  day  (5th  July)  I  marked  98°  in  the  shade,  my  high- 
water  mark,  higher  by  one  degree  than  I  had  ever  seen 
it  before.  I  happened  to  meet  a  neighbor  ;  as  we  mopped 
our  brows  at  each  other,  he  told  me  that  he  had  just 
cleared  100°,  and  I  went  home  a  beaten  man.  I  had  not 
felt  the  heat  before,  save  as  a  beautiful  exaggeration  of 
sunshine ;  but  now  it  oppressed  me  with  the  prosaic  vul 
garity  of  an  oven.  What  had  been  poetic  intensity  be 
came  all  at  once  rhetorical  hyperbole.  I  might  suspect 
his  thermometer  (as  indeed  I  did,  for  we  Harvard  men 
are  apt  to  think  ill  of  any  graduation  but  our  own) ;  but 


MY   GAEDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  5 

it  was  a  poor  consolation.  The  fact  remained  that  his 
herald  Mercury,  standing  a-tiptoe,  could  look  down  on 
mine.  I  seem  to  glimpse  something  of  this  familiar 
weakness  in  Mr.  White.  He,  too,  has  shared  in  these 
mercurial  triumphs  and  defeats.  Nor  do  I  doubt  that 
he  had  a  true  country-gentleman's  interest  in  the  weather 
cock  ;  that  his  first  question  on  coming  down  of  a  morn 
ing  was,  like  Barabas's, 

"  Into  what  quarter  peers  my  halcyon's  bill?  " 
It  is  an  innocent  and  healthful  employment  of  the 
mind,  distracting  one  from  too  continual  study  of  him 
self,  and  leading  him"  to  dwell  rather  upon  the  indiges 
tions  of  the  elements  than  his  own.  "Did  the  wind 
back  round,  or  go  about  with  the  sun  1 "  is  a  rational 
question  that  bears  not  remotely  on  the  making  of  hay 
and  the  prosperity  of  crops.  I  have  little  doubt  that 
the  regulated  observation  of  the  vane  in  many  different 
places,  and  the  interchange  of  results  by  telegraph,  would 
put  the  weather,  as  it  were,  in  our  power,  by  betraying 
its  ambushes  before  it  is  ready  to  give  the  assault.  At 
first  sight,  nothing  seems  more  drolly  trivial  than  the 
lives  of  those  whose  single  achievement  is  to  record  the 
wind  and  the  temperature  three  times  a  day.  Yet  such 
men  are  doubtless  sent  into  the  world  for  this  special 
end,  and  perhaps  there  is  no  kind  of  accurate  observa 
tion,  whatever  its  object,  that  has  not  its  final  use  and 
value  for  some  one  or  other.  It  is  even  to  be  hoped 
that  the  speculations  of  our  newspaper  editors  and  their 
myriad  correspondents  upon  the  signs  of  the  political  at 
mosphere  may  also  fill  their  appointed  place  in  a  well-reg 
ulated  universe,  if  it  be  only  that  of  supplying  so  many 
more  jack-o'-lanterns  to  the  future  historian.  Nay,  the 
observations  on  finance  of  an  M.  C.  whose  sole  knowledge 
of  the  subject  has  been  derived  from  a  lifelong  success  in 
getting  a  living  out  of  the  public  without  paying  any 


6  MY   GARDEN   ACQUAINTANCE. 

equivalent  therefor,  will  perhaps  be  of  interest  hereafter 
to  some  explorer  of  our  cloaca  maxima,  whenever  it  is 
cleansed. 

For  many  years  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of  noting 
down  some  of  the  leading  events  of  my  embowered  soli 
tude,  such  as  the  coming  of  certain  birds  and  the  like,  — 
a  kind  of  memoires  pour  servir,  after  the  fashion  of  White, 
rather  than  properly  digested  natural  history.  I  thought 
it  not  impossible  that  a  few  simple  stories  of  my  winged 
acquaintances  might  be  found  entertaining  by  persons 
of  kindred  taste. 

There  is  a  common^  notion  that  animals  are  better 
meteorologists  than  men,  and  I  have  little  doubt  that  in 
immediate  weather-wisdom  they  have  the  advantage  of 
our  sophisticated  senses  (though  I  suspect  a  sailor  or 
shepherd  would  be  their  match),  but  I  have  seen  nothing 
that  leads  me  to  believe  their  minds  capable  of  erecting 
the  horoscope  of  a  whole  season,  and  letting  us  know  be 
forehand  whether  the  winter  will  be  severe  or  the  sum 
mer  rainless.  I  mqre  than  suspect  that  the  clerk  of  the 
weather  himself  does  not  always  know  very  long  in  ad 
vance  whether  he  is  to  draw  an  order  for  hot  or  cold, 
dry  or  moist,  and  the  musquash  is  scarce  likely  to  be 
wiser.  I  have  noted  but  two  days'  difference  in  the 
coming  of  the  song-sparrow  between  a  very  early  and  a 
very  backward  spring.  This  very  year  I  saw  the  linnets 
at  work  thatching,  just  before  a  snow-storm  which 
covered  the  ground  several  inches  deep  for  a  number  of 
days.  They  struck  work  and  left  us  for  a  while,  no 
doubt  in  search  of  food.  Birds  frequently  perish  from 
sudden  changes  in  our  whimsical  spring  weather  of 
which  they  had  no  foreboding.  More  than  thirty  years 
ago,  a  cherry-tree,  then  in  full  bloom,  near  my  window, 
was  covered  with  humming-birds  benumbed  by  a  fall  of 
mingled  rain  and  snow,  which  probably  killed  many  of 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  7 

them.  It  should  seem  that  their  coming  was  dated  by 
the  height  of  the  sun,  which  betrays  them  into  unthrifty 
matrimony ; 

"  So  nature  pricketh  hem  in  their  corages  " ; 
but  their  going  is  another  matter.  The  chimney-swal 
lows  leave  us  early,  for  example,  apparently  so  soon  as 
their  latest  fledglings  are  firm  enough  of  wing  to  at 
tempt  the  long  rowing-match  that  is  before  them.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  wild-geese  probably  do  not  leave  the 
North  till  they  are  frozen  out,  for  I  have  heard  their 
bugles  sounding  southward  so  late  as  the  middle  of 
December.  What  may  be  called  local  migrations  are 
doubtless  dictated  by  the  chances  of  food.  I  have  once 
been  visited  by  large  flights  of  cross-bills  ;  and  whenever 
the  snow  lies  long  and  deep  on  the  ground,  a  flock  of 
cedar-birds  comes  in  midwinter  to  eat  the.  berries  on  my 
hawthorns.  I  have  never  been  quite  able  to  fathom  the 
local,  -or  rather  geographical  partialities  of  birds.  Nevrar 
before  this  summer  (1870)  have  the  king-birds,  hand 
somest  of  flycatchers,  built  in  my  orchai'd  ;  though  I 
always  know  where  to  find  them  within  half  a  mile. 
The  rose-breasted  grosbeak  ha?  been  a  familiar  bird  in 
Brookline  (three  miles  away),  yet  I  never  saw  one  here 
till  last  July,  when  I  found  a  female  busy  among  my 
raspberries  and  surprisingly  bold.  I  hope  she  was  pros- 
pectiny  with  a  view  to  settlement  in  our  garden.  She 
seemed,  on  the  whole,  to  think  well  of  my  fruit,  and  I 
would  gladly  plant  another  bed  if  it  would  help  to  win 
over  so  delightful  a  neighbor. 

The  return  of  the  robin  is  commonly  announced  by 
the  newspapers,  like  that  of  eminent  or  notorious  people 
to  a  watering-place,  as  the  first  authentic  notification  of 
spring.  And  such  his  appearance  in  the  orchard  and 
garden  undoubtedly  is.  But,  in  spite  of  his  name  of 
migratory  thrush,  he  stays  with  us  all  winter,  and  I 


8  MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE. 

have  seen  him  when  the  thermometer  marked  15  de 
grees  below  zero  of  Fahrenheit,  armed  impregnably  with 
in,  like  Emerson's  Titmouse,  and  as  cheerful  as  he.  The 
robin  has  a  bad  reputation  among  people  who  do  not 
value  themselves  less  for  being  fond  of  cherries.  There  is, 
I  admit,  a  spice  of  vulgarity  in  him,  and  his  song  is  rather 
of  the  Bloomfield  sort,  too  largely  ballasted  with  prose. 
His  ethics  are  of  the  Poor  Richard  school,  and  the  main 
chance  which  calls  forth  all  his  energy  is  altogether  of 
the  belly.  He  never  has  those  fine  intervals  of  lunacy 
into  which  his  cousins,  the  catbird  and  the  mavis,  are 
apt  to  fall.  But  for  a'  that  and  twice  as  muckle  's  a' 
that,  I  would  not  exchange  him  for  all  the  cherries  that 
ever  came  out  of  Asia  Minor.  With  whatever  faults,  he 
has  not  wholly  forfeited  that  superiority  which  belongs 
to  the  children  of  nature.  He  has  a  finer  taste  in  fruit 
than  could  be  distilled  from  many  successive  committees 
of  the  Horticultural  Society,  and  he  eats  with  a  relishing 
gulp  not  inferior  to  Dr.  Johnson's.  He  feels  and  freely 
exercises  his  right  of  eminent  domain.  His  is  the  earli 
est  mess  of  green  peas ;  his  all  the  mulberries  I  had 
fancied  mine.  But  if  he  get  also  the  lion's  share  of  the 
raspberries,  he  is  a  great  planter,  and  sows  those  wild  ones 
in  the  woods,  that  solace  the  pedestrian  and  give  a  mo 
mentary  calm  even  to  the  jaded  victims  of  the  White 
Hills.  He  keeps  a  strict  eye  over  one's  fruit,  and  knows 
to  a  shade  of  purple  when  your  grapes  have  cooked  long 
enough  in  the  sun.  During  the  sevci-e  drought  a  few 
years  ago,  the  robins  wholly  vanished  from  my  garden. 
I  neither  saw  nor  heard  one  for  three  weeks.  Mean 
while  a  small  foreign  grape-vine,  rather  shy  of  bearing, 
seemed  to  find  the  dusty  air  congenial,  and,  dreaming 
perhaps  of  its  sweet  Argos  across  the  sea,  decked  itself 
with  a  score  or  so  of  fair  bunches.  I  watched  them 
from  day  to  day  till  they  should  have  secreted  sugar 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  9 

enough  from  the  sunbeams,  and  at  last  made  up  my 
mind  that  I  would  celebrate  my  vintage  the  next  morn 
ing.  But  the  robins  too  had  somehow  kept  note  of 
them.  They  must  have  sent  out  spies,  as  did  the  Jews 
into  the  promised  land,  before  I  was  stirring.  When  I 
went  with  my  basket,  at  least  a  dozen  of  these  winged 
vintagers  bustled  out  from  among  the  leaves,  and  alight 
ing  on  the  nearest  trees  interchanged  some  shrill  re 
marks  about  me  of  a  derogatory  nature.  They  had  fairly 
sacked  the  vine.  Not  Wellington's  veterans  made 
cleaner  work  of  a  Spanish  town ;  not  Federals  or  Con 
federates  were  ever  more  impartial  in  the  confiscation  of 
neutral  chickens.  I  was  keeping  my  grapes  a  secret  to 
surprise  the  fair  Fidele  with,  but  the  robins  made  them 
a  profounder  secret  to  her  than  I  had  meant.  The  tat 
tered  remnant  of  a  single  bunch  was  all  my  harvest- 
home.  How  paltry  it  looked  at  the  bottom  of  my 
basket,  —  as  if  a  humming-bird  had  laid  her  egg  in  an 
eagle's  nest  !  I  could  not  help  laughing  ;  and  the  robins 
seemed  to  join  heartily  in  the  merriment.  There  was  a 
native  grape-vine  close  by,  blue  with  its  less  refined 
abundance,  but  my  cunning  thieves  preferred  the  foreign 
flavor.  Could  I  tax  them  with  want  of  taste  1 

The  robins  are  not  good  solo  singers,  but  their  chorus, 
as,  like  primitive  fire-worshippers,  they  hail  the  return 
of  light  and  warmth  to  the  world,  is  unrivalled.  There 
are  a  hundred  singing  like  one.  They  are  noisy  enough 
then,  and  sing,  as  poets  should,  with  no  afterthought. 
But  when  they  come  after  cherries  to  the  tree  near  my 
window,  they  muffle  their  voices,  and  their  faint  pip, 
pip,  pop  !  sounds  far  away  at  the  bottom  of  the  gar 
den,  where  they  know  I  shall  not  suspect  them  of  rob 
bing  the  great  black-walnut  of  its  bitter-rinded  store.* 

*  The  screech-owl,  whose  cry,  despite  his  ill  name,  is  one  of  the 
sweetest  sounds  in  nature,  softens  his  voice  in  the  same  way  with  tho 
most  beguiling  mockery  of  distance. 


10  MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE. 

They  arc  feathered  Pecksniffs,  to  be  sure,  but  then  how 
brightly  their  breasts,  that  look  rather  shabby  in  the 
sunlight,  shine  in  a  rainy  day  against  the  dark  green  of 
the  fringe-tree  !  After  they  have  pinched  and  shaken 
all  the  life  out  of  an  earthworm,  as  Italian  cooks  pound 
all  the  spirit  out  of  a  steak,  and  then  gulped  him,  they 
stand  up  in  honest  self-confidence,  expand  their  red 
waistcoats  with  the  virtuous  air  of  a  lobby  member,  and 
outface  you  with  an  eye  that  calmly  challenges  inquiry. 
"  Do  7  look  like  a  bird  that  knows  the  flavor  of  raw- 
vermin  1  I  throw  myself  upon  a  jury  of  my  peers. 
Ask  any  robin  if  he  ever  ate  anything  less  ascetic  than 
the  frugal  berry  of  the  juniper,  and  he  will  answer  that 
his  vow  forbids  him."  Can  such  an  open  bosom  cover 
such  depravity  1  Alas,  yes  !  I  have  no  doubt  his  breast 
was  redder  at  that  very  moment  with  the  blood  of  my 
raspberries.  On  the  whole,  he  is  a  doubtful  friend  in  the 
garden.  He  makes  his  dessert  of  all  kinds  of  berries, 
and  is  not  averse  from  early  pears.  But  when  we  re 
member  how  omnivorous  he  is,  eating  his  own  weight  in 
an  incredibly  short  time,  and  that  Nature  seems  exhausfr- 
less  in  her  invention  of  new  insects  hostile  to  vegetation, 
perhaps  we  may  reckon  that  he  does  more  good  than 
harm.  For  my  own  part,  I  would  rather  have  his  cheer 
fulness  and  kind  neighborhood  than  many  berries. 

For  his  cousin,  the  catbird,  I  have  a  still  warmer  re 
gard.  Always  a  good  singer,  he  sometimes  nearly  equals 
the  brown  thrush,  and  has  the  merit  of  keeping  up  his 
music  later  in  the  evening  than  any  bird  of  my  familiar 
acquaintance.  Ever  since  I  can  remember,  a  pair  of 
them  have  built  in  a  gigantic  syringa,  near  our  front 
door,  and  I  have  known  the  male  to  sing  almost  unin 
terruptedly  during  the  evenings  of  early  summer  till 
twilight  duskened  into  dark.  They  differ  greatly  in 
vocal  talent,  but  all  have  a  delightful  way  of  crooning 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  11 

over,  and,  as  it  were,  rehearsing  their  song  in  an  under 
tone,  which  makes  their  nearness  always  unobtrusive. 
Though  there  is  the  most  trustworthy  witness  to  the 
imitative  propensity  of  this  bird,  I  have  only  once, 
during  an  intimacy  of  more  than  forty  years,  heard  him 
indulge  it.  In  that  case,  the  imitation  was  by  no  means 
so  close  as  to  deceive,  but  a  free  reproduction  of  the 
notes  of  some  other  birds,  especially  of  the  oriole,  as  a 
kind  of  variation  in  his  own  song.  The  catbird  is  as 
shy  as  the  robin  is  vulgarly  familiar.  Only  when  his 
nest  or  his  fledglings  are  approached  does  he  become 
noisy  and  almost  aggressive.  I  have  known  him  to 
station  his  young  in  a  thick  cornel-bush  on  the  edge  of 
the  raspberry-bed,  after  the  fruit  began  to  ripen,  and 
feed  them  there  for  a  week  or  more.  In  such  cases  he 
shows. none  of  that  conscious  guilt  which  makes  the 
robin  contemptible.  On  the  contrary,  he  will  maintain 
his  post  in  the  thicket,  and  sharply  scold  the  intruder 
who  ventures  to  steal  his  berries.  After  all,  his  claim  is 
only  for  tithes,  while  the  robin  will  bag  your  entire  crop 
if  he  get  a  chance. 

Dr.  "VVatts's  statement  that  "  birds  in  their  little  nests 
agree,"  like  too  many  others  intended  to  form  the  infant 
mind,  is  very  far  from  being  true.  On  the  contrary,  the 
most  peaceful  relation  of  the  different  species  to  each 
other  is  that  of  armed  neutrality.  They  are  very  jealous 
of  neighbors.  A  few  years  ago,  I  was  much  interested 
in  the  housebuilding  of  a  pair  of  summer- yellow-birds. 
They  had  chosen  a  very  pretty  site  near  the  top  of  a  tall 
white  lilac,  within  easy  eye-shot  of  a  chamber  window. 
A  very  pleasant  thing  it  was  to  see  their  little  home 
growing  with  mutual  help,  to  watch  their  industrious 
skill  interrupted  only  by  little  flirts  and  snatches  of 
endearment,  frugally  cut  short  by  the  common-sense 
of  the  tiny  housewife.  They  had  brought  their  work 


12  MY   GARDEN   ACQUAINTANCE. 

nearly  to  an  end,  and  had  already  begun  to  line  it  -with 
fern-down,  the  gathering  of  which  demanded  more  dis 
tant  journeys  and  longer  absences.  But,'  alas  !  the 
syringa,  immemorial  manor  of  the  catbirds,  was  not 
more  than  twenty  feet  away,  and  these  "  giddy  neigh 
bors  "  had,  as  it  appeared,  been  all  along  jealously  watch 
ful,  though  silent,  witnesses  of  what  they  deemed  an 
intrusion  of  squatters.  No  sooner  were  the  pretty 
mates  fairly  gone  for  a  new  load  of  lining,  than 

"  To  their  unguarded  nest  these  weasel  Scots 
Came  stealing." 

Silently  they  flew  back  and  forth,  each  giving  a  vengeful 
dab  at  the  nest  in  passing.  They  did  not  fall-to  and 
deliberately  destroy  it,  for  they  might  have  been  caught 
at  their  mischief.  As  it  was,  whenever  the  yellow- 
birds  came  back,  their  enemies  were  hidden  in  their  own 
sight-proof  bush.  Several  times  their  unconscious  vic 
tims  repaired  damages,  but  at  length,  after  counsel  taken 
together,  they  gave  it  up.  Perhaps,  like  other  unlet 
tered  folk,  they  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Devil 
•was  in  it,  and  yielded  to  the  invisible  persecutions  of 
•witchcraft. 

The  robins,  by  constant  attacks  and  annoyances,  have 
succeeded  iu  driving  off  the  blue-jays  who  used  to  build 
in  our  pines,  their  gay  colors  and  quaint  noisy  ways 
making  them  welcome  and  amusing  neighbors.  I  once 
had  the  chance  of  doing  a  kindness  to  a  household  of 
them,  which  they  received  with  very  friendly  condescen 
sion.  I  had  had  my  eye  for  some  time  upon  a  nest,  and 
was  puzzled  by  a  constant  fluttering  of  what  seemed 
full-grown  wings  in  it  whenever  I  drew  nigh.  At  last  I 
climbed  the  troe,  in  spito  of  angry  protests  from  the 
old  birds  against  my  intrusion.  The  mystery  had  a 
very  simple  solution.  In  building  the  nest,  a  long  piece 
of  packthread  had  been  somewhat  loosely  woven  in. 


MY   GARDEN   ACQUAINTANCE.  13 

Three  of  the  young  had  contrived  to  entangle  them 
selves  in  it,  and  had  become  full-growu  without  being 
able  to  launch  themselves  upon  the  air.  One  was  un 
harmed  ;  another  had  so  tightly  twisted  the  cord  about 
its  shank  that  one  foot  was  curled  up  and  seemed  para 
lyzed  ;  the  third,  in  its  struggles  to  escape,  had  sawn 
through  the  flesh  of  the  thigh  and  so  much  harmed 
itself  that  I  thought  it  humane  to  put  an  end  to  its 
misery.  When  I  took  out  my  knife  to  cut  their  hempen 
bonds,  the  heads  of  the  family  seemed  to  divine  rny 
friendly  intent.  Suddenly  ceasing  their  cries  and 
threats,  they  perched  quietly  within  reach  of  my  hand, 
and  watched  me  in  my  work  of  manumission.  This, 
owing  to  the  fluttering  terror  of  the  prisoners,  was  an 
affair  of  some  delicacy ;  but  erelong  I  was  rewarded  by 
seeing  one  of  them  fly  away  to  a  neighboring  tree,  while 
the  cripple,  making  a  parachute  of  his  wings,  came  light 
ly  to  the  ground,  and  hopped  off  as  well  as  he  could  with 
one  leg,  obsequiously  waited  on  by  his  elders.  A  week 
later  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  meeting  him  in  the  pine- 
walk,  in  good  spirits,  and  already  so  far  recovered  as  to 
be  able  to  balance  himself  with  the  lame  foot.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  in  his  old  age  he  accounted  for  his  lame 
ness  by  some  handsome  story  of  a  wound  received  at 
the  famous  Battle  of  the  Pines,  when  our  tribe,  over 
come  by  numbers,  was  driven  from  its  ancient  camping- 
ground.  Of  late  years  the  jays  have  visited  us  only  at 
intervals ;  and  in  winter  their  bright  plumage,  set  off 
by  the  snow,  and  their  cheerful  cry,  are  especially  wel 
come.  They  would  have  furnished  ^Esop  with  a  fable, 
for  the  feathered  crest  in  which  they  seem  to  take  so 
much  satisfaction  is  often  their  fatal  snare.  Country 
boys  make  a  hole  with  their  finger  in  the  snow-crust 
just  large  enough  to  admit  the  jay's  head,  and,  hollow 
ing  it  out  somewhat  beneath,  bait  it  with  a  few  kernels 


14  MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE. 

of  corn.  The  crest  slips  easily  into  the  trap,  but  refuses 
to  be  pulled  out  again,  and  he  who  came  to  feast  remains 
a  prey. 

Twice  have  the  crow-blackbirds  attempted  a  settle 
ment  in  my  pines,  and  twice  have  the  robins,  who  claim 
a  right  of  pre-emption,  so  successfully  played  the  part 
of  border-ruffians  as  to  drive  them  away,  —  to  my  great 
regret,  for  they  are  the  best  substitute  we  have  for 
rooks.  At  Shady  Hill  (nowr,  alas  !  empty  of  its  so  long- 
loved  household)  they  build  by  hundreds,  and  nothing 
can  be  more  cheery  than  their  creaking  clatter  (like  a 
convention  of  old-fashioned  tavern-signs)  as  they  gather 
at  evening  to  debate  in  mass  meeting  their  windy  poli 
tics,  or  to  gossip  at  their  tent-doors  over  the  events  of 
the  day.  Their  port  is  grave,  and  their  stalk  across  the 
turf  as  martial  as  that  of  a  second-rate  ghost  in  Hamlet. 
They  never  meddled  with  my  corn,  so  far  as  I  could 
discover. 

For  a  few  years  I  had  crows,  but  their  nests  are  an 
irresistible  bait  for  boys,  and  their  settlement  was  broken 
np.  They  grew  so  wonted  as  to  throw  off  a  great  part 
of  their  shyness,  and  to  tolerate  my  near  approach. 
One  very  hot  day  I  stood  for  some  time  within  twenty 
feet  of  a  mother  and  three  children,  who  sat  on  an  elm 
bough  over  my  head,  gasping  in  the  sultry  air,  and 
holding  their  wings  half-spread  for  coolness.  All  birds 
during  the  pairing  season  become  more  or  less  sentimen 
tal,  and  murmur  soft  nothings  in  a  tone  very  unlike  the 
grinding-organ  repetition  and  loudness  of  their  habitual 
song.  The  crow  is  very  comical  as  a  lover,  and  to  hear 
him  trying  to  soften  his  croak  to  the  proper  Saint  Preux 
standard,  has  something  the  effect  of  a  Mississippi  boat 
man  quoting  Tennyson.  Yet  there  are  few  things  to  my 
ear  more  melodious  than  his  caw  of  a  clear  winter  morn 
ing  as  it  drops  to  you  filtered  through  five  hundred 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  15 

fathoms  of  crisp  blue  air.  The  hostility  of  all  smaller 
birds  makes  the  moral  character  of  the  crow,  for  all  his 
deaconlike  demeanor  and  garb,  somewhat  questionable. 
He  could  never  sally  forth  without  insult.  The  golden 
robins,  especially,  Avould  chase  him  as  far  as  I  could  fol 
low  with  my  eye,  making  him  duck  clumsily  to  avoid 
their  importunate  bills.  I  do  not  believe,  however,  that 
he  robbed  any  nests  hereabouts,  for  the  refuse  of  the 
gas-works,  which,  in  our  free-and-easy  community,  is 
allowed  to  poison  the  river,  supplied  him  with  dead 
alewives  in  abundance.  I  used  to  watch  him  making 
his  periodical  visits  to  the  salt-marshes  and  coming  back 
with  a  fish  in  his  beak  to  his  young  savages,  who,  no 
doubt,  like  it  in  that  condition  which  makes  it  savory  to 
the  Kanakas  and  other  corvine  races  of  men. 

Oriqles  are  in  great  plenty  with  me.  I  have  seen 
seven  males  flashing  about  the  garden  at  once.  A 
merry  crew  of  them  swing  their  hammocks  from  the 
pendulous  boughs.  During  one  of  these  latter  years, 
when  the  canker-worms  stripped  our  elms  as  bare  as 
winter,  these  birds  went  to  the  trouble  of  rebuilding 
their  unroofed  nests,  and  chose  for  the  purpose  trees 
which  are  safe  from  those  swarming  vandals,  such  as  the 
ash  and  the  button-wood.  One  year  a  pair  (disturbed, 
I  suppose,  elsewhere)  built  a  second  nest  in  an  elm, 
within  a  few  yards  of  the  house.  My  friend,  Edward  E. 
Hale,  told  me  once  that  the  oriole  rejected  from  his  web 
all  strands  of  brilliant  color,  and  I  thought  it  a  striking 
example  of  that  instinct  of  concealment  noticeable  in 
many  birds,  though  it  should  seem  in  this  instance  that 
the  nest  was  amply  protected  by  its  position  from  all 
marauders  but  owls  and  squirrels.  Last  year,  however, 
I  had  the  fullest  proof  that  Mr.  Hale  was  mistaken. 
A  pair  of  orioles  built  on  the  lowest  trailer  of  a  weeping 
elm,  which  hung  within  ten  feet  of  our  drawing-room 


16  MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE. 

window,  and  so  low  that  I  could  reach  it  from  the 
ground.  The  nest  was  wholly  woven  and  felted  with 
ravellings  of  woollen  carpet  in  which  scarlet  predomi 
nated.  "Would  the  same  thing  have  happened  in  the 
woods  1  Or  did  the  nearness  of  a  human  dwelling 
perhaps  give  the  birds  a  greater  feeling  of  security  ? 
They  are  very  bold,  by  the  way,  in  quest  of  cordage, 
and  I  have  often  watched  them  stripping  the  fibrous 
bark  from  a  honeysuckle  growing  over  the  very  door. 
But,  indeed,  all  my  birds  look  upon  me  as  if  I  were  a 
"nere  tenant  at  will,  and  they  were  landlords.  With 
shame  I  confess  it,  I  have  been  bullied  even  by  a  hum 
ming-bird.  This  spring,  as  I  was  cleansing  a  pear-tree 
of  its  lichens,  one  of  these  little  zigzagging  blurs  came 
purring  toward  me,  couching  his  long  bill  like  a  lance, 
his  throat  sparkling  with  angry  fire,  to  warn  me  oft'  from 
a  Missouri-currant  whose  honey  he  was  sipping.  And 
many  a  time  he  has  driven  me  out  of  a  flower-bed. 
This  summer,  by  the  way,  a  pair  of  these  winged 
emeralds  fastened  their  mossy  acorn-cup  upon  a  bough 
of  the  same  elm  which  the  orioles  had  enlivened  the 
year  before.  We  watched  all  their  proceedings  from  the 
window  through  an  opera-glass,  and  saw  their  two  nest 
lings  grow  from  black  needles  with  a  tuft  of  down  at  the 
lower  end,  till  they  whirled  away  on  their  first  short 
experimental  flights.  They  became  strong  of  wing  in  a 
surprisingly  short  time,  and  I  never  saw  them  or  the 
male  bird  after,  though  the  female  was  regular  as  usual 
in  her  visits  to  our  petunias  and  verbenas.  I  do  not 
think  it  ground  enough  for  a  generalization,  but  in  the 
many  times  when  I  watched  the  old  birds  feeding  their 
young,  the  mother  always  alighted,  while  the  father  as 
uniformly  remained  upon  the  wing. 

The  bobolinks  are  generally  chance  visitors,  tinkling 
through  the  garden  in  blossoming-time,  but  this  year, 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  17 

owing  to  the  long  rains  early  in  the  season,  their  favorite 
meadows  were  flooded,  and  they  were  driven  to  the  up 
land.  So  I  had  a  pair  of  them  domiciled  in  my  grass- 
field.  The  male  used  to  perch  in  an  apple-tree,  then  in 
full  bloom,  and,  while  I  stood  perfectly  still  close  by,  he 
would  circle  away,  quivering  round  the  entire  field  of 
five  acres,  with  no  break  in  his  song,  and  settle  down 
again  among  the  blossoms,  to  be  hurried  away  almost 
immediately  by  a  new  rapture  of  music.  He  had  the 
volubility  of  an  Italian  charlatan  at  a  fair,  and,  like  him, 
appeared  to  be  proclaiming  the  merits  of  some  quack 
remedy.  Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try-Doctor-Lincolns-opodel- 
doc  !  he  seemed  to  repeat  over  and  over  again,  with  a 
rapidity  that  would  have  distanced  the  deftest-tongued 
Figaro  that  ever  rattled.  I  remember  Count  Gurowski 
saying  once,  with  that  easy  superiority  of  knowledge 
about  this  country  which  is  the  monopoly  of  foreigners, 
that  we  had  no  singing-birds  !  Well,  well,  Mr.  Hepworth 
Dixon  has  found  the  typical  America  in  Oneida  and 
Salt  Lake  City.  Of  course,  an  intelligent  European  is 
the  best  judge  of  these  matters.  The  truth  is  there  are 
more  singing-birds  in  Europe  because  there  are  fewer 
forests.  These  songsters  love  the  neighborhood  of  man 
because  hawks  and  owls  are  rarer,  while  their  own  food 
is  more  abundant.  Most  people  seem  to  think,  the  more 
trees,  the  more  birds.  Even  Chateaubriand,  who  first 
tried  the  primitive-forest-cure,  and  whose  description  of 
the  wilderness  in  its  imaginative  effects  is  unmatched, 
fancies  the  "  people  of  the  air  singing  their  hymns  to 
him."  So  far  as  my  own  observation  goes,  the  farther 
one  penetrates  the  sombre  solitudes  of  the  woods,  the 
more  seldom  does  he  hear  the  voice  of  any  singing-bird. 
Jn  spite  of  Chateaubriand's  minuteness  of  detail,  in  spite 
of  that  marvellous  reverberation  of  the  decrepit  tree 
falling  of  its  own  weight,  which  he  was  the  first  t<? 

B 


18  MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE. 

notice,  I  cannot  help  doubting  whether  he  made  his  way 
very  deep  into  the  wilderness.  At  any  rate,  in  a  letter 
to  Fontanes,  written  in  1804,  he  speaks  of  mes  chevaux 
paissant  d,  quelque  distance.  To  be  sure  Chateaubriand 
\vas  apt  to  mount  the  high  horse,"  and  this  may  have 
been  but  an  afterthought  of  the  grand  seigneur,  but 
certainly  one  would  not  make  much  headway  on  horse 
back  toward  the  druid  fastnesses  of  the  primaeval  pine. 

The  bobolinks  build  in  considerable  numbers  in  a 
meadow  within  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  us.  A  houseless 
lane  passes  through  the  midst  of  their  camp,  and  in 
clear  westerly  weather,  at  the  right  season,  one  may 
hear  a  score  of  them  singing  at  once.  When  they  are 
breeding,  if  I  chance  to  pass,  one  of  the  male  birds 
always  accompanies  me  like  a  constable,  flitting  from 
post  to  post  of  the  rail-fence,  with  a  short  note  of  re 
proof  continually  repeated,  till  I  am  fairly  out  of  the 
neighborhood.  Then  he  will  swing  away  into  the  air 
and  run  down  the  wind,  gurgling  music  without  stint 
over  the  unheeding  tussocks  of  meadow-grass  and  dark 
clumps  of  bulrushes  that  mark  his  domain. 

We  have  no  bird  whose  song  will  match  the  nightin 
gale's  in  compass,  none  whose  note  is  so  rich  as  that 
of  the  European  blackbird  ;  but  for  mere  rapture  I 
have  never  heard  the  bobolink's  rival.  But  his  opera- 
season  is  a  short  one.  The  ground  and  tree  sparrows 
are  our  most  constant  performers.  It  is  now  late  in 
August,  and  one  of  the  latter  sings  every  day  and  all 
day  long  in  the  garden.  Till  within  a  fortnight,  a  pair 
of  indigo-birds  would  keep  up  their  lively  duo  for  an 
hour  together.  While  I  write,  I  hear  an  oriole  gay  as 
in  June,  and  the  plaintive  may-be  of  the  goldfinch  tells 
me  he  is  stealing  my  lettuce-seeds.  I  know  not  what 
the  experience  of  others  may  have  been,  but  the  only 
bird  I  have  ever  heard  sing  in  the  night  has  been  the 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  19 

chip-bird.  I  should  say  he  sang  about  as  often  during 
the  darkness  as  cocks  crow.  One  can  hardly  help  fancy 
ing  that  he  sings  in  his  dreams. 

"  Father  of  light,  what  sunnie  seed, 
What  glance  of  day  hast  thou  confined 
Into  this  bird?     To  all  the  breed 
This  busie  ray  thou  hast  assigned; 
Their  magnetism  works  all  night, 
And  dreams  of  Paradise  and  light." 

On  second  thought,  I  remember  to  have  heard  the  cuckoo 
strike  the  hours  nearly  all  night  with  the  regularity  of  a 
Swiss  clock. 

The  dead  limbs  of  our  elms,  which  I  spare  to  that 
end,  bring  us  the  flicker  every  summer,  and  almost 
daily  I  hear  his  wild  scream  and  laugh  close  at  hand, 
himself  invisible.  He  is  a  shy  bird,  but  a  few  days  ago 
I  had  the  satisfaction  of  studying  him  through  the 
blinds  'as  he  sat  on  a  tree  within  a  few  feet  of  me. 
Seen  so  near  and  at  rest,  he  makes  good  his  claim  to  the 
title  of  pigeon-woodpecker.  Lumberers  have  a  notion 
that  he  is  harmful  to  timber,  digging  little  holes  through 
the  bark  to  encourage  the  settlement  of  insects.  The 
regular  rings  of  such  perforations  which  one  may  see  in 
almost  any  apple-orchard  seem  to  give  some  probability 
to  this  theory.  Almost  every  season  a  solitary  quail 
visits  us,  and,  unseen  among  the  currant-bushes,  calls 
Bob  White,  Bob  White,  as  if  he  were  playing  at  hide-and- 
seek  with  that  imaginary  being.  A  rarer  visitant  is  the 
turtle-dove,  whose  pleasant  coo  (something  like  the 
muffled  crow  of  a  cock  from  a  coop  covered  with  snow)  I 
have  sometimes  heard,  and  whom  I  once  had  the  good 
luck  to  see  close  by  me  in  the  mulberry-tree.  The  wild- 
pigeon,  once  numerous,  I  have  not  seen  for  many  years.* 
Of  savage  birds,  a  hen-hawk  now  and  then  quarters  him 
self  upon  us  for  a  few  days,  sitting  sluggish  in  a  tree 

*  They  made  their  appearance  again  this  summer  (1870). 


20  MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE. 

after  a  surfeit  of  poultry.  One  of  them  once  offered  me 
a  near  shot  from  my  study-window  one  drizzly  day  for 
several  hours.  But  it  was  Sunday,  and  I  gave  him  the 
benefit  of  its  gracious  truce  of  God. 

Certain  birds  have  disappeared  from  our  neighborhood 
within  my  memory.  I  remember  when  the  whippoorwill 
could  be  heard  in  Sweet  Auburn.  The  night-hawk,  once 
common,  is  now  rare.  The  brown  thrush  has  moved  far 
ther  \ip  country.  For  years  I  have  not  seen  or  heard 
any  of  the  larger  owls,  whose  hooting  was  one  of  my  boy 
ish  terrors.  The  cliff-swallow,  strange  emigrant,  that 
eastward  takes  his  way,  has  come  and  gone  again  in  my 
time.  The  bank-swallows,  wellnigh  innumerable  during 
my  boyhood,  no  longer  frequent  the  crumbly  cliff  of  the 
gravel-pit  by  the  river.  The  barn-swallows,  which  once 
swarmed  in  our  barn,  flashing  through  the  dusty  sim- 
streaks  of  the  mow,  have  been  gone  these  many  years. 
My  father  would  lead  me  out  to  see  them  gather  on  the 
roof,  and  take  counsel  before  their  yearly  migration,  as 
Mr.  White  used  to  see  them  at  Selborne.  Eheu,  fugaces  ! 
Thank  fortune,  the  swift  still  glues  his  nest,  and  rolls  his 
distant  thunders  night  and  day  in  the  wide-throated  chim 
neys,  still  sprinkles  the  evening  air  with  his  merry  twit 
tering.  The  populous  heronry  in  Fresh  Pond  meadows 
has  been  wellnigh  broken  up,  biit  still  a  pair  or  two 
haunt  the  old  home,  as  the  gypsies  of  Ellangowan  their 
ruined  huts,  and  every  evening  fly  over  us  riverwards, 
clearing  their  throats  with  a  hoarse  hawk  as  they  go,  and, 
in  cloudy  weather,  scarce  higher  than  the  tops  of  the 
chimneys.  Sometimes  I  have  known  one  to  alight  in 
one  of  our  trees,  though  for  what  purpose  I  never  could 
divine.  Kingfishers  have  sometimes  puzzled  me  in  the 
same  way,  perched  at  high  noon  in  a  pine,  springing  their 
watchman's  rattle  when  they  flitted  away  from  my  curi 
osity,  and  seeming  to  shove  their  top-heavy  heltds  along 
as  a  man  does  a  wheelbarrow. 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  21 

Some  birds  have  left  us,  I  suppose,  because  the  country 
is  growing  less  wild.  I  once  found  a  summer  duck's  nest 
within  quarter  of  a  mile  of  our  house,  but  such  a  trou 
vaille  would  be  impossible  now  as  Kidd's  treasure.  And 
yet  the  mere  taming  of  the  neighborhood  does  not  quite 
satisfy  me  as  an  explanation.  Twenty  years  ago,  on  my 
way  to  bathe  in  the  river,  I  saw  every  day  a  brace  of 
woodcock,  on  the  miry  edge  of  a  spring  within  a  few  rods 
of  a  house^and  constantly  visited  by  thirsty  cows.  There 
was  no  growth  of  any  kind  to  conceal  them,  and  yet  these 
ordinarily  shy  birds  were  almost  as  indifferent  to  my 
passing  as  common  poultry  would  have  been.  Since 
bird-nesting  has  become  scientific,  and  dignified  itself  as 
oology,  that,  no  doubt,  is  pai-tly  to  blame  for  some  of  our 
losses.  But  some  old  friends  are  constant;  Wilson's 
thrush  comes  every  year  to  remind  me  of  that  most  poetic 
of  ornithologists.  He  flits  before  me  through  the  pine- 
walk  like  the  very  genius  of  solitude.  A  pair  of  pewees 
have  built  immemorially  on  a  jutting  brick  in  the  arched 
entrance  to  the  ice-house.  '  Always  on  the  same  brick, 
and  never  more  than  a  single  pair,  though  two  broods  of 
five  each  are  raised  there  every  summer.  How  do  they 
settle  their  claim  to  the  homestead  1  By  what  right  of 
primogeniture  1  Once  the  children  of  a  man  employed 
about  the  place  oologized  the  nest,  and  the  pewees  left  us 
for  a  year  or  two.  I  felt  towards  those  boys  as  the  mess 
mates  of  the  Ancient  Mariner  did  towards  him  after  he 
had  shot  the  albatross.  But  the  pewees  came  back  at 
last,  and  one  of  them  is  now  on  his  wonted  perch,  so  near 
my  window  that  I  can  hear  the  click  of  his  bill  as  he 
snaps  a  fly  on  the  wing  with  the  unerring  precision  a 
stately  Trasteverina  shows  in  the  capture  of  her  smaller 
deer.  The  pewee  is  the  first  bird  to  pipe  up  in  the  morn 
ing  ;  and,  during  the  early  summer  he  preludes  his 
matutinal  ejaculation  of  peivee  with  a  slender  whistle, 


22  MY    GARDEN   ACQUAINTANCE. 

xinheard  at  any  other  time.  He  saddens  with  the  sea 
son,  and,  as  summer  declines,  he  changes  his  note  to  elieu, 
pewee  !  as  if  in  lamentation.  Had  he  been  an  Italian  bird, 
Ovid  would  have  had  a  plaintive  tale  to  teh1  about  him. 
He  is  so  familiar  as  often  to  pursue  a  fly  through  the 
open  window  into  my  library. 

There  is  something  inexpressibly  dear  to  me  in  these 
old  friendships  of  a  lifetime.  There  is  scarce  a  tree  of 
mine  but  has  had,  at  some  time  or  other,  a  happy  home 
stead  among  its  boughs,  to  which  I  cannot  say," 

"  Many  light  hearts  and  wings, 
Which  now  be  dead,  lodged  in  thy  living  bowers." 

My  walk  under  the  pines  would  lose  half  its  summer 
charm  were  I  to  miss  that  shy  anchorite,  the  Wilson's 
thrush,  nor  hear  in  haying-time  the  metallic  ring  of 
his  song,  that  justifies  his  rustic  name  of  scythe-ivhet. 
I  protect  my  game  as  jealously  as  an  English  squire. 
If  anybody  had  oologized  a  certain  cuckoo's  nest  I 
know  of  (I  have  a  pair  in  my  garden  every  year), 
it  would  have  left  me  a  sore  place  in  my  mind  for 
weeks.  I  love  to  bring  these  aborigines  back  to  the  man- 
suetude  they  showed  to  the  early  voyagers,  and  before 
(forgive  the  involuntary  pun)  they  had  grown  accustomed 
to  man  and  knew  his  savage  ways.  And  they  repay  your 
kindness  with  a  sweet  familiarity  too  delicate  ever  to 
breed  contempt.  I  have  made  a  Penn-treaty  with  them, 
preferring  that  to  the  Puritan  way  with  the  natives, 
which  converted  them  to  a  little  Hebraism  and  a  great 
deal  of  Medford  rum.  If  they  will  not  come  near  enough 
to  me  (as  most  of  them  will),  I  bring  them  close  with  an 
opera-glass,  —  a  much  better  weapon  than  a  gun.  I 
would  not,  if  I  could,  convert  them  from  their  pretty 
pagan  ways.  The  only  one  I  sometimes  have  savage 
doubts  about  is  the  red  squirrel.  I  think  he  ob'logizes. 
I  know  he  eats  cherries  (we  counted  five  of  them  at  one 


MY   GARDEN  ACQUAINTANCE.  23 

time  in  a  single  tree,  the  stones  pattering  down  like  the 
sparse  hail  that  preludes  a  storm),  and  that  he  gnaws  off 
the  small  end  of  pears  to  get  at  the  seeds.  He  steals 
the  corn  from  under  the  noses  of  my  poultry.  But  what 
wrould  you  have  1  He  will  come  down  upon  the  limb  of 
the  tree  I  am  lying  under  till  he  is  within  a  yard  of  me. 
He  and  his  mate  will  scurry  up  and  down  the  great  black- 
walnut  for  my  diversion,  chattering  like  monkeys.  Can 
I  sign  his  death-warrant  who  has  tolerated  me  about  his 
grounds  so  long  1  Not  I.  Let  them  steal,  and  welcome. 
I  am  sure  I  should,  had  I  had  the  same  bringing  up  and 
the  same  temptation.  As  for  the  birds,  I  do  not  believe 
there  is  one  of  them  but  does  more  good  than  harm ;  and 
of  how  many  featherless  bipeds  can  this  be  said  ] 


A  GOOD  WORD  FOR  WINTER. 


"  "IV  /TEN  scarcely  know  how  beautiful  fire  is,''  says 
-1VJL  Shelley ;  and  I  am  apt  to  think  there  are  a 
good  many  other  things  concerning  which  their  knowl 
edge  might  be  largely  increased  without  becoming  burden 
some.  Nor  are  they  altogether  reluctant  to  be  taught, 
—  not  so  reluctant,  perhaps,  as  unable,  —  and  education 
is  sure  to  find  one  fulcrum  ready  to  her  hand  by  which 
to  get  a  purchase  on  them.  For  most  of  us,  I  have  no 
ticed,  are  not  without  an  amiable  willingness  to  assist  at 
any  spectacle  or  entertainment  (loosely  so  called)  for 
which  no  fee  is  charged  at  the  door.  If  special  tickets 
are  sent  us,  another  element  of  pleasure  is  added  in  a 
sense  of  privilege  and  pre-eminence  (pitiably  scarce  in 
a  democracy)  so  deeply  rooted  in  human  nature  that  I 
have  seen  people  take  a  strange  satisfaction  in  being 
near  of  kin  to  the  mute  chief  personage  in  a  funeral.  It 
gave  them  a  moment's  advantage  over  the  rest  of  us 
whose  grief  was  rated  at  a  lower  place  in  the  procession. 
But  the  words  "  admission  free  "  at  the  bottom  of  a  hand 
bill,  though  holding  out  no  bait  of  inequality,  have  yet 
a  singular  charm  for  many  minds,  especially  in  the  coun 
try.  There  is  something  touching  in  the  constancy  with 
•which  men  attend  free  lectures,  and  in  the  honest 
patience  with  which  they  listen  to  them.  He  who  pays 
may  yawn  or  shift  testily  in  his  seat,  or  even  go  out  with 
an  awful  reverberation  of  criticism,  for  he  has  bought  the 
right  to  do  any  or  oil  of  these  and  paid  for  it.  But  gra- 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR  WINTER.  25 

tuitous  hearers  are  anaesthetized  to  suffering  by  a  sense 
of  virtue.  They  are  performing  perhaps  the  noblest,  as 
it  is  one  of  the  most  difficult,  of  human  functions  in  get 
ting  Something  (no  matter  how  small)  for  Nothing. 
They  are  not  pestered  by  the  awful  duty  of  securing 
their  money's  worth.  They  are  wasting  time,  to  do 
which  elegantly  and  without  lassitude  is  the  highest 
achievement  of  civilization.  If  they  are  cheated,  it  is,  at 
worst,  only  of  a  superfluous  hour  which  was  rotting  oil 
their  hands.  Not  only  is  mere  amusement  made  more 
piquant,  but  instruction  more  palatable,  by  this  univer 
sally  relished  sauce  of  gratuity.  And  if  the  philosophic 
observer  finds  an  object  of  agreeable  contemplation  in 
the  audience,  as  they  listen  to  a'discourse  on  the  proba 
bility  of  making  missionaries  go  down  better  with  the 
Feejee-Islanders  by  balancing  the  hymn-book  in  one 
pocket  with  a  bottle  of  Worcestershire  in  the  other,  or 
to  a  plea  for  .arming  the  female  gorilla  with  the  ballot, 
he  also  takes  a  friendly  interest  in  the  lecturer,  and  ad 
mires  the  wise  economy  of  Nature  who  thus  contrives 
an  ample  field  of  honest  labor  for  her  bores.  Even 
when  the  insidious  hat  is  passed  round  after  one  of  these 
eleemosynary  feasts,  the  relish  is  but  heightened  by  a 
conscientious  refusal  to  disturb  the  satisfaction's  com 
pleteness  with  the  rattle  of  a  single  contributory  penny. 
So  firmly  persuaded  am  I  of  this  gratis-instinct  in  our 
common  humanity,  that  I  believe  I  could  fill  a  house  by 
advertising  a  free  lecture  on  Tupper  considered  as  a 
philosophic  poet,  or  on  my  personal  recollections  of  the 
late  James  K.  Polk.  This  being  so,  I  have  sometimes 
wondered  that  the  peep-shows  which  Nature  provides 
with  such  endless  variety  for  her  children,  and  to  which 
we  are  admitted  on  the  bare  condition  of  having  eyes, 
should  be  so  generally  neglected.  To  be  sure,  eyes 
are  not  so  common  as  people  think,  or  poets  would  be 

2 


26  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

plentier,  and  perhaps  also  these  exhibitions  of  hers  arc 
cheapened  in  estimation  by  the  fact  that  in  enjoying 
them  we  are  not  getting  the  better  of  anybody  else. 
Your  true  lovers  of  nature,  however,  contrive  to  get 
even  this  solace;  and  Wordsworth  looking  upon  moun 
tains  as  his  own  peculiar  sweethearts,  was  jealous  of 
anybody  else  who  ventured  upon  even  the  most  innocent 
flirtation  with  them.  As  if  such  fellows,  indeed,  could 
pretend  to  that  nicer  sense  of  what-d'ye-call-it  which  was 
so  remarkable  in  him  !  Marry  come  up  !  Mountains,  no 
doubt,  may  inspire  a  profounder  and  more  exclusive  pas 
sion,  but  on  the  whole  I  am  not  sorry  to  have  been  born 
and  bred  among  more  domestic  scenes,  where  I  can  be 
hospitable  without  a  pang.  I  am  going  to  ask  you  pres 
ently  to  take  potluck  with  me  at  a  board  where  Winter 
shall  supply  whatever  there  is  of  cheer. 

I  think  the  old  fellow  has  hitherto  had  scant  justice 
done  him  in  the  main.  We  make  him  the  symbol  of  old 
age  or  death,  and  think  we  have  settled  the  matter.  As 
if  old  age  were  never  kindly  as  well  as  frosty ;  as  if  it 
had  no  reverend  graces  of  its  own  as  good  in  their  way  as 
the  noisy  impertinence  of  childhood,  the  elbowing  self- 
conceit  of  youth,  or  the  pompous  mediocrity  of  middle 
life  !  As  if  there  were  anything  discreditable  in  death, 
or  nobody  had  ever  longed  for  it !  Suppose  we  grant 
that  Winter  is  the  sleep  of  the  year,  what  then  1  I  take 
it  upon  me  to  say  that  his  dreams  are  finer  than  the 
best  reality  of  his  waking  rivals. 

"  Sleep,  Silence'  child,  the  father  of  soft  Rest," 

is  a  very  agreeable  acquaintance,  and  most  of  us  are  bet 
ter  employed  in  his  company  than  anywhere  else.  For 
my  own  part,  I  think  Winter  a  pretty  wide-awake  old 
boy,  and  his  bluff  sincerity  and  hearty  ways  are  more 
congenial  to  my  mood,  and  more  wholesome  for  me, 


A   GOOD    WORD   FOR   WINTER.  27 

than  any  charms  of  which  his  rivals  are  capable. 
Spring  is  a  fickle  mistress,  who  either  does  not  know  her 
own  mind,  or  is  so  long  in  making  it  up,  whether  you 
shall  have  her  or  not  have  her,  that  one  gets  tired  at 
last  of  her  pretty  miffs  and  reconciliations.  You  go  to 
her  to  be  cheered  up  a  bit,  and  ten  to  one  catch  her  in 
the  sulks,  expecting  you  to  find  enough  good-humor  for 
both.  After  she  has  become  Mrs.  Summer  she  grows  a 
little  more  staid  in  her  demeanor  ;  and  her  abundant 
table,  where  you  are  sure  to  get  the  earliest  fruits  and 
vegetables  of  the  season,  is  a  good  foundation  for  steady 
friendship;  but  she  has  lost  that  delicious  aroma  of 
maidenhood,  and  what  was  delicately  rounded  grace  in 
the  girl  gives  more  than  hints  of  something  like  redun 
dance  in  the  matron.  Autumn  is  the  poet  of  the  family. 
He  gets  you  up  a  splendor  that  you  would  say  was 
made  out  of  real  sunset ;  but  it  is  nothing  more  than  a 
few  hectic  leaves,  when  all  is  done.  He  is  but  a  senti 
mentalist,  after  all ;  a  kind  of  Lamartine  whining  along 
the  ancestral  avenues  he  has  made  bare  timber  of,  and 
begging  a  contribution  of  good-spirits  from  your  own 
savings  to  keep  him  in  countenance.  But  Winter  has 
his  delicate  sensibilities  too,  only  he  does  not  make  them 
as  good  as  indelicate  by  thrusting  them  forever  in  your 
face.  He  is  a  better  poet  than  Autumn,  when  he  has  a 
mind,  but,  like  a  truly  great  one  as  he  is,  he  brings  you 
down  to  your  bare  manhood,  and  bids  you  understand 
him  out  of  that,  with  no  adventitious  helps  of  associa 
tion,  or  he  will  none  of  you.  He  does  not  touch  those 
melancholy  chords  on  which  Autumn  is  as  great  a 
master  as  Heine.  Well,  is  there  no  such  thing  as 
thrumming  on  them  and  maundering  over  them  till 
they  get  out  of  tune,  and  you  wish  some  manly  hand 
would  crash  through  them  and  leave  them  dangling 
brokenly  forever  ]  Take  Winter  as  you  find  him,  and  he 


28  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

turns  out  to  be  a  thoroughly  honest  fellow,  with  no  non 
sense  in  him,  and  tolerating  none  in  you,  which  is  a 
great  comfort  in  the  long  run.  He  is  not  what  they 
call  a  genial  critic ;  but  bring  a  real  man  along  with  you, 
and  you  will  find  there  is  a  crabbed  generosity  about 
the  old  cynic  that  you  would  not  exchange  for  all  the 
creamy  concessions  of  Autumn.  "  Season  of  mists  and 
mellow  fruitfulness,"  quotha ?  That  's  just  it;  Winter 
soon  blows  your  head  clear  of  fog  and  makes  you  see 
things  as  they  are  ;  I  thank  him  for  it !  The  truth  is, 
between  ourselves,  I  have  a  very  good  opinion  of  the 
whole  family,  who  always  welcome  me  without  making 
me  feel  as  if  I  were  too  much  of  a  poor  relation.  There 
ought  to  be  some  kind  of  distance,  never  so  little,  you 
know,  to  give  the  true  relish.  They  are  as  good  com 
pany,  the  worst  of  them,  as  any  I  know,  and  I  am  not  a 
little  flattered  by  a  condescension  from  any  one  of  them ; 
but  I  happen  to  hold  Winter's  retainer,  this  time,  and, 
like  an  honest  advocate,  am  bound  to  make  as  good  a 
showing  as  I  can  for  him,  even  if  it  cost  a  few  slurs  upon 
the  rest  of  the  household.  Moreover,  Winter  is  coming, 
and  one  would  like  to  get  on  the  blind  side  of  him. 

The  love  of  Nature  in  and  for  herself,  or  as  a  mirror 
for  the  moods  of  the  -mind,  is  a  modern  thing.  The  flee 
ing  to  her  as  an  escape  from  man  was  brought  into 
fashion  by  Rousseau  ;  for  his  prototype  Petrarch,  though 
he  had  a  taste  for  pretty  scenery,  had  a  true  antique 
horror  for  the  grander  aspects  of  nature.  He  got  once 
to  the  top  of  Mont  Ventoux,  but  it  is  very  plain  that  ho 
did  not  enjoy  it.  Indeed,  it  is  only  within  a  century  or  so 
that  the  search  after  the  picturesque  has  been  a  safe  em 
ployment.  It  is  not  so  even  now  in  Greece  or  Southern 
Italy.  Where  the  Anglo-Saxon  carves  his  cold  fowl,  and 
leaves  the  relics  of  his  picnic,  the  ancient  or  mediaeval 
man  might  be  pretty  confident  that  some  ruffian  would 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  29 

try  the  edge  of  his  knife  on  a  chicken  of  the  Platonic 
sort,  and  leave  more  precious  bones  as  an  offering  to  the 
genius  of  the  place.  The  ancients  were  certainly  more 
social  than  we,  though  that,  perhaps,  was  natural 
enough,  when  a  good  part  of  the  world  was  still  covered 
with  forest.  They  huddled  together  in  cities  as  well  for 
safety  as  to  keep  their  minds  warm.  The  Romans  had  a 
fondness  for  country  life,  but  they  had  fine  roads,  and 
Rome  was  always  within  easy  reach.  The  author  of  the 
Book  of  Job  is  the  earliest  I  know  of  who  showed  any 
profound  sense  of  the  moral  meaning  of  the  outward 
world ;  and  I  think  none  has  approached  him  since, 
though  Wordsworth  comes  nearest  with  the  first  two 
books  of  the  "  Prelude."  But  their  feeling  is  not  pre 
cisely  of  the  kind  I  speak  of  as  modern,  and  which  gave 
rise  to  what  is  called  descriptive  poetry.  Chaucer  opens 
his  Clerk's  Tale  with  a  bit  of  landscape  admirable  for  its 
large  style,  and  as  well  composed  as  any  Claude. 

"  There  is  right  at  the  west  end  of  Itaille, 
Down  at  the  root  of  Vesulus  the  cold, 
A  lusty  plain  abundant  of  vitaille, 
Where  many  a  tower  and  town  thou  mayst behold, 
That  founded  were  in  time  of  fathers  old. 
And  many  an  other  delectable  sight; 
And  Saluces  this  noble  country  hight." 

What  an  airy  precision  of  touch  there  is  here,  and 
what  a  sure  eye  for  the  points  of  character  in  landscape  ! 
But  the  picture  is  altogether  subsidiary.  No  doubt 
the  works  of  Salvator  Rosa  and  Caspar  Poussin  show  that 
there  must  have  been  some  amateur  taste  for  the  grand 
and  terrible  in  scenery  ;  but  the  British  poet  Thomson 
("  sweet-souled  "  is  Wordsworth's  apt  word)  was  the  first 
to  do  with  words  what  they  had  done  partially  with 
colors.  He  was  turgid,  no  good  metrist,  and  his  English 
is  like  a  translation  from  one  of  those  poets  who  wrote 
in  Latin  after  it  was  dead ;  but  he  was  a  man  of  sincere 


30  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WIXTEB. 

genius,  and  not  only  English,  but  European  literature  is 
largely  in  his  debt.  He  was  the  inventor  of  cheap 
amusement  for  the  million,  to  be  had  of  All-out-doors  for 
the  asking.  It  was  his  impulse  which  unconsciously 
gave  direction  to  Rousseau,  and  it  is  to  the  school-  of  Jean 
Jacques  that  we  owe  St.  Pierre,  Cowper,  Chateaubriand, 
Wordsworth,  Byron,  Lamartiue,  George  Sand,  Ruskin,— 
the  great  painters  of  ideal  landscape. 

So  long  as  men  had  slender  means,  whether  of  keep 
ing  out  cold  or  checkmating  it  with  artificial  heat, 
"Winter  was  an  unwelcome  guest,  especially  in  the  coun 
try.  There  he  was  the  bearer  of  a  let  Ire  de  cacJnt, 
which  shut  its  victims  in  solitary  confinement  with  few 
resources  but  to  boose  round  the  fire  and  repeat  ghost- 
stories,  which  had  lost  all  their  freshness  and  none  of 
their  terror.  To  go  to  bed  was  to  lie  awake  of  cold, 
with  an  added  shudder  of  fright  whenever  a  loose  case 
ment  or  a  waving  curtain  chose  to  give  you  the  goose- 
flesh.  Bussy  Rabutin,  in  one  of  his  letters,  gives  us  a 
notion  how  uncomfortable  it  was  in  the  country,  with 
green  wood,  smoky  chimneys,  and  doors  and  windows 
that  thought  it  was  their  duty  to  make  the  wind  whistle, 
not  to  keep  it  out.  With  fuel  so  dear,  it  could  not  have 
been  much  better  in  the  city,  to  judge  by  Menage's 
warning  against  the  danger  of  our  dressing-gowns  taking 
fire,  while  we  cuddle  too  closely  over  the  sparing  blaze. 
The  poet  of  Winter  himself  is  said  to  have  written  in 
bed,  with  his  hand  through  a  hole  in  the  blanket ;  and 
we  may  suspect  that  it  was  the  warmth  quite  as  much 
as  the  company  that  first,  drew  men  together  at  the 
coftee-house.  Coleridge,  in  January,  1800,  writes  to 
Wedgewood  :  "I  am  sitting  by  a  fire  in  a  rug  great 
coat It  is  most  barbarously  cold,  and  you,  I  fear, 

can  shield  yourself  from  it  only  by  perpetual  imprison 
ment."  This  thermometrical  view  of  winter  is,  I  grant,  a 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  31 

depressing  one  ;  for  I  think  there  is  nothing  so  demoraliz 
ing  as  cold.  I  know  of  a  boy  who,  when  his  father,  a 
bitter  economist,  was  brought  home  dead,  said  only, 
"  Now  we  can  burn  as  much  wood  as  we  like."  I  would 
not  off-hand  prophesy  the  gallows  for  that  boy.  I  re 
member  with  a  shudder  a  pinch  I  got  from  the  cold  once 
in  a  railroad-car.  A  born  fanatic  of  fresh  air,  I  found 
myself  glad  to  see  the  windows  hermetically  sealed  by 
the  freezing  vapor  of  our  breath,  and  plotted  the  assassi 
nation  of  the  conductor  every  time  he  opened  the  door. 
I  felt  myself  sensibly  barbarizing,  and  would  have  shared 
Colonel  Jack's  bed  in  the  ash-hole  of  the  glass-furnace 
with  a  grateful  heart.  Since  then  I  have  had  more 
charity  for  the  prevailing  ill-opinion  of  winter.  It  was 
natural  enough  that  Ovid  should  measure  the  years  of 
his  exile  in  Pontus  by  the  number  of  winters. 

.    Ut  sumus  in  Ponto,  ter  frigore  constitit  Ister, 

Facta  es;t  Euxini  dura  ter  unda  maris: 
Thrice  hath  the  cold  bound  Ister  fast,  since  I 
In  Pontus  was,  thrice  Euxine's  wave  made  hard. 

Jubinal  has  printed  an  Anglo-Norman  piece  of  doggerel 
in  which  Winter  and  Summer  dispute  which  is  the  better 
man.  It  is  not  without  a  kind  of  rough  and  inchoate 
humor,  and  I  like  it  because  old  Whitebeard  gets  toler 
ably  fair  play.  The  jolly  old  fellow  boasts  of  his  rate  of 
living,  with  that  contempt  of  poverty  which  is  the  weak 
spot  in  the  burly  English  nature. 

Ja  Dieu  ne  place  que  me  avyenge 

Que  ne  face  plus  honour 

Et  plus  despenz  en  un  soul  jour 

Que  vus  en  tote  vostre  vie : 

Now  God  forbid  it  hap  to  me 
That  I  make  not  more  great  display, 
And  spend  more  in  a  single  day 
Than  you  can  do  in  all  your  life. 

The  best  touch,  perhaps,  is  Winter's  claim  for  credit  as  a 
mender  of  the  highways,  which  was  not  without  point 


32  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

•when  every  road  in  Europe  was  a  quagmire  during  a  good 
part  of  the  year  unless  it  was  bottomed  on  some  remains 
of  Roman  engineering. 

Je  su,  fet-il,  seignur  et  mestre 

Et  a  bon  droit  le  dey  estre, 

Quant  de  la  bowe  face  cauc6 

Par  un  petit  de  geele : 

Master  and  lord  I  am,  says  he, 

And  of  good  right  so  ought  to  be, 

Since  I  make  causeys,  safely  crost, 

Of  mud,  with  just  a  pinch  of  frost. 

But  there  is  no  recognition  of  Winter  as  the  best  of  out 
door  company. 

Even  Emerson,  an  open-air  man,  and  a  bringer  of  it, 
if  ever  any,  confesses, 

"  The  frost-king  ties  my  fumbling  feet, 
Sings  in  my  ear,  my  hands  are  stones, 
Curdles  the  blood  to  the  marble  bones, 
Tugs  at  the  heartstrings,  numbs  the  sense, 
And  hems  in  life  with  narrowing  fence." 

Winter  was  literally  "  the  inverted  year,"  as  Thomson 
called  him ;  for  such  entertainments  as  could  be  had 
must  be  got  within  doors.  What  cheerfulness  there  was 
in  brumal  verse  was  that  of  Horace's  dissolve  frigus  ligna 
super  foco  large  reponenx,  so  pleasantly  associated  with 
the  cleverest  scene  in  Roderick  Random.  This  is  the 
tone  of  that  poem  of  Walton's  friend  Cotton,  which  won 
the  praise  of  Wordsworth  :  — 

"  Let  us  home, 
Our  mortal  enemy  is  come ; 
Winter  and  all  his  blustering  train 
Have  made  a  voyage  o'er  the  main. 

"  Fly,  fly,  the  foe  advances  fast; 

Into  our  fortress  let  us  haste. 

Where  all  the  roarers  of  the  north 

Can  neither  storm  nor  starve  us  forth. 
"  There  underground  a  magazine 

Of  sovereign  juice  is  cellared  in, 

Liquor  that  will  the  siege  maintain 

Should  Phoebus  ne'er  return  again. 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  33 

"Whilst  we  together  jovial  sit 
Careless,  and  crowned  with  mirth  and  wit, 
Where,  though  bleak  winds  confine  us  home 
Our  fancies  round  the  world  shall  roam." 

Thomson's  view  of  Winter  is  also,  on  the  whole,  a  hostile 
one,  though  he  does  justice  to  his  grandeur. 

"  Thus  Winter  falls, 

A  heavy  gloom  oppressive  o'er  the  woild, 
Through  Nature  shedding  influence  malign." 

He  finds  his  consolations,  like  Cotton,  in  the  house, 
though  more  refined  :  — 

"While  without 

The  ceaseless  winds  blow  ice.  be  my  retreat 
Between  the  groaning  forest  and  the  shore 
Beat  by  the  boundless  multitude  of  waves, 
A  rural,  sheltered,  solitary  scene, 
Where  ruddy  fire  and  beaming  tapers  join 
To  cheer  the  gloom.     There  studious  let  me  sit 
,  And  hold  high  converse  with  the  mighty  dead." 

Doctor  Akenside,  a  man  to  be  spoken  of  with  respect, 
follows  Thomson.  With  him,  too,  "Winter  desolates 
the  year,"  and 

"  How  pleasing  wears  the  wintry  night 
Spent  with  the  old  illustrious  dead  ! 
While  by  the  taper's  trembling  light 
I  seem  those  awful  scenes  to  tread 
Where  chiefs  or  legislators  lie,"  &c. 

Akenside  had  evidently  been  reading  Thomson.  He 
had  the  conceptions  of  a  great  poet  with  less  faculty  than 
many  a  little  one,  and  is  one  of  those  versifiers  of  whom 
it  is  enough  to  say  that  we  are  always  willing  to  break 
him  off  in  the  middle  "with  an  &c.,  well  knowing  that 
what  follows  is  but  the  coming-round  again  of  what  went 
before,  marching  in  a  circle  with  the  cheap  numerosity 
of  a  stage-army.  In  truth,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  short 
days  of  that  cloudy  northern  climate  should  have  added 
to  winter  a  gloom  borrowed  of  the  mind.  We  hardly 
know,  till  we  have  experienced  the  contrast,  how  sensibly 
our  winter  is  alleviated  by  the  longer  daylight  and  the 


34  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

pellucid  atmosphere.  I  once  spent  a  winter  in  Dresden, 
a  southern  climate  compared  with  England,  and  really 
almost  lost  my  respect  for  the  sun  when  I  saw  him  grop 
ing  among  the  chimney-pots  opposite  my  windows  as  he 
described  his  impoverished  arc  in  the  sky.  The  enforced 
seclusion  of  the  season  makes  it  the  time  for  serious  study 
and  occupations  that  demand  fixed  incomes  of  unbroken 
time.  This  is  why  Milton  said  "  that  his  vein  never 
happily  flowed  but  from  the  autumnal  equinox  to  the 
vernal,"  though  in  his  twentieth  year  he  had  written,  on 
the  return  of  spring,  — 

Fallor  ?  an  et  nobis  redeunt  in  carmina  vires 
Ingeniumque  mihi  munere  veris  adest  'i 

Err  I ?  or  do  the  powers  of  song  return 

To  me,  and  genius  too,  the  gifts  of  Spring  ? 

Goethe,  so  far  as  I  remember,  was  the  first  to  notice 
the  cheerfulness  of  snow  in  sunshine.  His  Harz-reise  im 
Winter  gives  no  hint  of  it,  for  that  is  a  diluted  reminis 
cence  of  Greek  tragic  choruses  and  the  Book  of  Job  in 
nearly  equal  parts.  In  one  of  the  singularly  interesting 
and  characteristic  letters  to  Frau  von  Stein,  however, 
written  during  the  journey,  he  says  :  "  It  is  beautiful  in 
deed  ;  the  mist  heaps  itself  together  in  light  snowr-clouds, 
the  sun  looks  through,  and  the  snow  over  everything 
gives  back  a  feeling  of  gayety."  But  I  find  in  Cowper 
the  first  recognition  of  a  general  amiability  in  Winter. 
The  gentleness  of  his  temper,  and  the  wide  charity  of 
his  sympathies,  made  it  natural  for  him  to  find  good  in 
everything  except  the  human  heart.  A  dreadful  creed 
distilled  from  the  darkest  moments  of  dyspeptic  solitaries 
compelled  him  against  his  will  to  see  in  that  the  one  evil 
thing  made  by  a  God  whose  goodness  is  over  all  his 
works.  Cowper's  two  walks  in  the  morning  and  noon  of 
a  winter's  day  are  delightful,  so  long  as  he  contrives  to 
let  himself  be  happy  in  the  graciousness  of  the  landscape. 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  35 

Your  muscles  grow  springy,  and  your  lungs  dilate  with 
the  crisp  air  as  you  walk  along  with  him.  You  laugh 
with  him  at  the  grotesque  shadow  of  your  legs  lengthened 
across  the  snow  by  the  just-risen  sun.  I  know  nothing 
that  gives  a  purer  feeling  of  out-door  exhilaration  than 
the  easy  verses  of  this  escaped  hypochondriac.  But 
Cowper  also  preferred  his  sheltered  garden-walk  to  those 
robuster  joys,  and  bitterly  acknowledged  the  depressing 
influence  of  the  darkened  year.  In  December,  1 780,  he 
writes  :  "  At  this  season  of  the  year,  and  in  this  gloomy 
uncomfortable  climate,  it  is  no  easy  matter  for  the  owner 
of  a  mind  like  mine  to  divert  it  from  sad  subjects,  and  to 
fix  it  upon  such  as  may  administer  to  its  amusement." 
Or  was  it  because  he  was  writing  to  the  dreadful  Newton  ? 
Perhaps  his  poetry  bears  truer  witness  to  his  habitual 
feeling,  for  it  is  only  there  that  poets  disenthral  them 
selves  of  their  reserve  and  become  fully  possessed  of  their 
greatest  charm,  —  the  power  of  being  franker  than  other 
men.  In  the  Third  Book  of  the  Task  he  boldly  affirms 
his  preference  of  the  country  to  the  city  even  in  winter  :  — 

"  But  are  not  wholesome  airs,  though  unperfumed 
By  roses,  and  clear  suns,  though  scarcely  felt, 
And  groves,  if  inharmonious,  yet  secure 
From  clamor,  and  whose  very  silence  charms, 
To  be  preferred  to  smoke  ?  .  .  .  . 
They  would  be,  were  not  madness  in  the  head 
And  folly  in  the  heart ;  were  England  now 
What  England  was,  plain,  hospitable  kind, 
And  undebauched." 

The  conclusion  shows,  however,  that  he  was  thinking 
mainly  of  fireside  delights,  not  of  the  blusterous  com 
panionship  of  nature.  This  appears  even  more  clearly  in 
the  Fourth  Book  :  — 

"  0  Winter,  ruler  of  the  inverted  year  "  ; 

but  I  cannot  help  interrupting  him  to  say  how  pleasant 
it  always  is  to  track  poets  through  the  gardens  of  their 


36  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

predecessors  and  find  out  their  likings  by  a  flower 
snapped  off  here  and  there  to  garnish  their  own  nosegays. 
Cowper  had  been  reading  Thomson,  and  "the  inverted 
year  "  pleased  his  fancy  with  its  suggestion  of  that  starry 
wheel  of  the  zodiac  moving  round  through  its  spaces  infi 
nite.  He  could  not  help  loving  a  handy  Latinism  (espe 
cially  with  elision  beauty  added),  any  more  than  Gray, 
any  more  than  Wordsworth,  —  on  the  sly.  But  the 
member  for  Olney  has  the  floor  :  — 

"  0  Winter,  ruler  of  the  inverted  year, 
Thy  scattered  hair  with  sleet  like  ashes  filled, 
Thy  breath  congealed  upon  thy  lips,  thy  cheeks 
Fringed  with  a  beard  made  white  with  other  snows 
Thau  those  of  age,  thy  forehead  wrapt  in  clouds, 
A  leafless  branch  thy  sceptre,  and  thy  throne 
A  sliding  car,  indebted  to  no  wheels, 
But  urged  by  storms  along  its  slippery  way, 
I  love  thee  all  unlovely  as  thou  seem'st, 
And  dreaded  as  thou  art !     Thou  hold'st  the  sun 
A  prisoner  in  the  yet  undawning  east, 
Shortening  his  journey  between  morn  and  noon, 
And  hurrying  him,  impatient  of  his  stay, 
Down  to  the  rosy  west,  but  kindly  still 
Compensating  his  loss  with  added  hours 
Of  social  converse  and  instructive  ease, 
And  gathering  at  short  notice,  in  one  group, 
The  family  dispersed,  and  fixing  thought, 
Not  less  dispersed  by  daylight  and  its  cares. 
I  crown  thee  king  of  intimate  delights, 
Fireside  enjoyments,  homeborn  happiness, 
And  all  the  comforts  that  the  lowly  roof 
Of  undisturbed  Retirement,  and  the  hours 
Of  long  uninterrupted  evening  know." 

I  call  this  a  good  human  bit  of  writing,  imaginative, 
too,  —  not  so  flushed,  not  so  ....  highfaluting  (let  me 
dare  the  odious  word  !)  as  the  modern  style  since  poets 
have  got  hold  of  a  theory  that  imagination  is  common- 
sense  turned  inside  out,  and  not  common-sense  sublimed, 
—  but  wholesome,  masculine,  and  strong  in  the  simplicity 
of  a  mind  wholly  occupied  with  its  theme.  To  me  Cow- 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  37 

per  is  still  the  best  of  our  descriptive  poets  for  erery-day 
wear.  And  what  unobtrusive  skill  he  has  !  How  he 
heightens,  for  example,  your  sense  of  winter-evening  se 
clusion,  by  the  twanging  horn  of  the  postman  on  the 
bridge  !  That  horn  has  rung  in  my  ears  ever  since  I 
first  heard  it,  during  the  consulate  of  the  second  Adams. 
Wordsworth  strikes  a  deeper  note  ;  but  does  it  not  some 
times  come  over  one  (just  the  least  in  the  world)  that 
one  would  give  anything  for  a  bit  of  nature  pure  and 
simple,  without  quite  so  strong  a  flavor  of  W.  W.  ]  W.  W. 
is,  of  course,  sublime  and  all  that  —  but !  For  my  part, 
I  will  make  a  clean  breast  of  it,  and  confess  that  I  can't 
look  at  a  mountain  without  fancying  the  late  laureate's 
gigantic  Roman  nose  thrust  between  me  and  it,  and  think 
ing  of  Dean  Swift's  profane  version  of  Romanos  rerum 
dominos  into  Roman  nose  !  a  rare  im  !  dom  your  nose  ! 
But  do  I  judge  verses,  then,  by  the  impression  made  on 
me  by  the  man  who  wrote  them  1  Not  so  fast,  my  good 
friend,  but,  for  good  or  evil,  the  character  and  its  intel 
lectual  product  are  inextricably  interfused. 

If  I  remember  aright,  Wordsworth  himself  (except  in 
his  magnificent  skating-scene  in  the  "  Prelude")  has  not 
much  to  say  for  winter  out  of  doors.  I  cannot  recall 
any  picture  by  him  of  a  snow-storm.  The  reason  may 
possibly  be  that  in  the  Lake  Country  even  the  winter 
storms  bring  rain  rather  than  snow.  He  was  thankful 
for  the  Christmas  visits  of  Crabb  Robinson,  because  they 
"helped  him  through  the  winter."  His  only  hearty 
praise  of  winter  is  when,  as  General  Fevrier,  he  defeats 
the  French  :  — 

"  Humanity,  delighting  to  behold 
A  fond  reflection  of  her  own  decav, 
Hath  painted  Winter  like  a  traveller  old, 
Propped  on  a  staff,  and,  through  the  sullen  day, 
In  hooded  mantle,  limping  o'er  the  plain 
As  though  his  weakness  were  disturbed  by  pain: 


R  283006 


38  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

Or,  if  ajuster  fancy  should  allow 
An  undisputed  symbol  of  command, 
The  chosen  sceptre  is  a  withered  bough 
Infirmly  grasped  within  a  withered  hand. 
These  emblems  suit  the  helpless  and  forlorn; 
But  mighty  Winter  the  device  shall  scorn." 

The  Scottish  poet  Grahame,  in  his  "  Sabbath,"  says 
manfully  :  — 

"  Now  is  the  time 
To  visit  Nature  in  her  grand  attire"; 

and  he  has  one  little  picture  which  no  other  poet  has 
surpassed  :  — 

*  High-ridged  the  whirled  drift  has  almost  reached 
The  powdered  keystone  of  the  churchyard  porch: 
Mute  hangs  the  hooded  bell;  the  tombs  lie  buried." 

Even  in  our  own  climate,  where  the  sun  shows  his  win 
ter  face  as  long  and  as  brightly  as  in  central  Italy,  the 
seduction  of  the  chimney-corner  is  apt  to  predominate  in 
the  mind  over  the  severer  satisfactions  of  muffled  fields 
and  penitential  woods.  The  very  title  of  Whittier's  de 
lightful  "  Snow-Bound  "  shows  what  he  was  thinking  of, 
though  he  does  vapor  a  little  about  digging  out  paths. 
The  verses  of  Emerson,  perfect  as  a  Greek  fragment 
(despite  the  archaism  of  a  dissyllabic  fire),  which  he  has 
chosen  for  his  epigraph,  tell  us,  too,  how  the 

"  Housemates  sit 

Around  the  radiant  fireplace,  enclosed 
In  a  tumultuous  privacy  of  storm." 

They  are  all  in  a  tale.  It  is  always  the  tristis  Hiems 
of  Virgil.  Catch  one  of  them  having  a  kind  word  for  old 
Barbe  Fleiirie,  unless  he  whines  through  some  cranny, 
like  a  beggar,  to  heighten  their  enjoyment  while  they 
toast  their  slippered  toes.  I  grant  there  is  a  keen  relish 
of  contrast  about  the  bickering  flame  as  it  gives  an 
emphasis  beyond  Gherardo  della  Notte  to  loved  faces,  or 
kindles  the  gloomy  gold  of  volumes  scarce  less  friendly, 
especially  when  a  tempest  is  blundering  round  the 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  39 

house.  Wordsworth  has  a  fine  touch  that  brings  home 
to  us  the  comfortable  contrast  of  without  and  within, 
during  a  storm  at  night,  and  the  passage  is  highly 
characteristic  of  a  poet  whose  inspiration  always  has  an 
undertone  of  bourgeois  :  — 

"  How  touching,  when,  at  midnight,  sweep 
Snow-muffled  winds,  and  all  is  dark, 
To  hear,  —  and  sink  again  to  sleep!  " 

J.  H.,  one  of  those  choice  poets  who  will  not  tarnish 
their  bright  fancies  by  publication,  always  insists  on  a 
snow-storm  as  essential  to  the  true  atmosphere  of  whist. 
Mrs.  Battles,  in  her  famous  rule  for  the  game,  implies 
winter,  and  would  doubtless  have  added  tempest,  if  it 
could  be  had  for  the  asking.  For  a  good  solid  read  also, 
into  the  small  hours,  there  is  nothing  like  that  sense  of 
safety  against  having  your  evening  laid  waste,  which 
Euroclydon  brings,  as  he  bellows  down  the  chimney, 
making  your  fire  gasp,  or  rustles  snow-flakes  against  the 
pane  with  a  sound  more  soothing  than  silence.  Emer 
son,  as  he  is  apt  to  do,  not  only  hit  the  nail  on  the 
head,  but  drove  it  home,  in  that  last  phrase  of  the 
"  tumultuous  privacy." 

But  I  would  exchange  this,  and  give  something  to 
boot,  for  the  privilege  of  walking  out  into  the  vast  blur 
of  a  north-northeast  snow-storm,  and  getting  a  strong 
draught  on  the  furnace  within,  by  drawing  the  first  fur 
rows  through  its  sandy  drifts.  I  love  those 

"  Noontide  twilights  which  snow  makes 
With  tempest  of  the  blinding  flakes." 

If  the  wind  veer  too  much  toward  the  east,  you  get  the 
heavy  snow  that  gives  a  true  Alpine  slope  to  the  boughs 
of  your  evergreens,  and  traces  a  skeleton  of  your  elms  in 
white;  but  you  must  have  plenty  of  north  in  your  gale 
if  you  want  those  driving  nettles  of  frost  that  sting  the 
cheeks  to  a  crimson  manlier  than  that  of  fire.  During 


40  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

the  great  storm  of  two  winters  ago,  the  most  robustious 
periwig-pated  fellow  of  late  years,  I  waded  and  floun 
dered  a  couple  of  miles  through  the  whispering  night, 
and  brought  home  that  feeling  of  expansion  we  have 
after  being  in  good  company.  "  Great  things  doeth  He 
which  we  cannot  comprehend ;  for  he  saith  to  the  snow, 
'  Be  thou  on  the  earth.' '' 

There  is  admirable  snow  scenery  in  Judd's  "Marga 
ret,"  but  some  one  has  confiscated  my  copy  of  that  ad 
mirable  book,  and,  perhaps,  Homer's  pictiire  of  a  snow 
storm  is  the  best  yet  in  its  large  simplicity  : — 

'*  And  as  in  winter-time,  when  Jove  his  cold  sharp  javelins  throws 
Amongst  us  mortals,  and  is  moved  to  white  the  earth  with  snows, 
The  winds  asleep,  he  freely  pours  till  highest  prom'ments, 
Hill-tops,  low  meadows,  and  the  fields  that  crown  with  most  contents 
The  toils  of  men,  seaports  and  shores,  are  hid,  and  every  place, 
But  floods,  that  fair  snow's  tender  flakes,  as  their  own  brood,  em 
brace." 

Chapman,  after  all,  though  he  makes  very  free  with 
him,  comes  nearer  Homer  than  anybody  else.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  original  of  that  fair  snow's  tender  flakes, 
but  neither  Pope  nor  Cowper  could  get  out  of  their 
heads  the  Psalmist's  tender  phrase,  "  He  giveth  his  snow 
like  wool,"  for  which  also  Homer  affords  no  hint.  Pope 
talks  of  "  dissolving  fleeces,"  and  Cowper  of  a  "fleecy 
mantle."  But  David  is  nobly  simple,  while  Pope  is 
simply  nonsensical,  and  Cowper  pretty.  If  they  must 
have  prettiness,  Martial' would  have  supplied  them  with 

it  in  his 

Densum  tacitarum  vellus  aquarum, 

which  is  too  pretty,  though  I  fear  it  would  have  pleased 
Dr.  Donne.  Eustathius  of  Thcssalonica  calls  snow  vftwp 
fptaftfs,  woolly  water,  which  a  poor  old  French  poet, 
Godeau,  has  amplified  into  this  :  — 

Lorsque  la  froidurc  inhumaine 
De  leur  verd  ornement  depouille  les  forets 
Sous  une  neige  epaisse  il  couvre  les  gue>ets, 
Et  la  neige  a  pour  eux  la  chaleur  de  la  laine. 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  41 

In  this,  as  in  Pope's  version  of  the  passage  in  Homer, 
there  is,  at  least,  a  sort  of  suggestion  of  snow-storm  in 
the  blinding  drift  of  words.  But,  on  the  whole,  if  one 
would  know  what  snow  is,  I  should  advise  him  not  to 
hunt  up  what  the  poets  have  said  about  it,  but  to  look 
at  the  sweet  miracle  itself. 

The  preludings  of  Winter  are  as  beautiful  as  those  of 
Spring.  In  a  gray  December  day,  when,  as  the  farmers 
say,  it  is  too  cold  to  snow,  his  numbed  fingers  will  let 
fall  doubtfully  a  few  star- shaped  flakes,  the  snow-drops 
and  anemones  that  harbinger  his  more  assured  reign. 
Now,  and  now  only,  may  be  seen,  heaped  on  the  hori 
zon's  eastern  edge,  those  "  blue  clouds "  from  forth 
which  Shakespeare  says  that  Mars  "  doth  pluck  the 
masoned  turrets."  Sometimes  also,  when  the  sun  is 
low,  you  will  see  a  single  cloud  trailing  a  flurry  of  snow 
along  the  southern  hills  in  a  wavering  fringe  of  purple. 
And  when  at  last  the  real  snow-storm,  comes,  it  leaves 
the  earth  with  a  virginal  look  on  it  that  no  other  of  the 
seasons  can  rival,  —  compared  with  which,  indeed,  they 
seem  soiled  and  vulgar. 

And  what  is  there  in  nature  so  beautiful  as  the  next 
morning  after  such  confusion  of  the  elements'?  Night 
has  no  silence  like  this  of  busy  day.  All  the  batteries 
of  noise  are  spiked.  We  see  the  movement  of  life  as  a 
deaf  man  sees  it,  a  mere  wraith  of  the  clamorous  exist 
ence  that  inflicts  itself  on  our  ears  when  the  ground  is 
bare.  The  earth  is  clothed  in  innocence  as  a  garment. 
Every  wound  of  the  landscape  is  healed ;  whatever  was 
stiff  has  been  sweetly  rounded  as  the  breasts  of  Aphro 
dite  ;  what  was  unsightly  has  been  covered  gently  with 
a  soft  splendor,  as  if,  Cowley  would  have  said,  Nature 
had  cleverly  let  fall  her  handkerchief  to  hide  it.  If  the 
Virgin  (Xotre  Dame  de  la  neige)  were  to  come  back,  here 
is  an  earth  that  would  not  bruise  her  foot  nor  stain  it. 


42  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

It  is 

"  The  fanned  snow 

That 's  bolted  by  the  northern  blasts  twice  o'er,"  — 
Soffiata  e  stretta  d:ii  venti  Schiavi, 
Winnowed  and  packed  by  the  Sclavonian  winds, — 

packed  so  hard  sometimes  on  hill-slopes  that  it  will  bear 
your  weight.  What  grace  is  in  all  the  curves,  as  if 
every  one  of  them  had  been  swept  by  that  inspired 
thumb  of  Phidias's  joxirneyman  ! 

Poets  have  fancied  the  footprints  of  the  wind  in  those 
light  ripples  that  sometimes  scurry  across  smooth  water 
with  a  sxidden  blur.  But  on  this  gleaming  hush  the 
aerial  deluge  has  left  plain  marks  of  its  course ;  and 
in  gullies  through  which  it  rushed  torrent-like,  the  eye 
finds  its  bed  irregularly  scooped  like  that  of  a  brook  in 
hard  beach-sand,  or,  in  more  sheltered  spots,  traced  with 
outlines  like  those  left  by  the  sliding  edges  of  the  surf 
upon  the  shore.  The  air,  after  all,  is  only  an  infinitely 
thinner  kind  of  water,  such  as  I  suppose  we  shall  have 
to  drink  when  the  state  does  her  whole  duty  as  a  moral 
reformer.  Xor  is  the  wind  the  only  thing  whose  trail 
you  will  notice  on  this  sensitive  surface.  You  will  find 
that  you  have  more  neighbors  and  night  visitors  than 
you  dreamed  of.  Here  is  the  dainty  footprint  of  a  cat ; 
here  a  dog  has  looked  in  on  you  like  an  amateur  watch 
man  to  see  if  all  is  right,  slumping  clumsily  about  in  the 
mealy  treachery.  And  look  !  before  you  were  up  in  the 
morning,  though  you  were  a  punctual  courtier  at  the 
sun's  levee,  here  has  been  a  squirrel  zigzagging  to  and 
fro  like  a  hound  gathering  the  scent,  and  some  tiny  bird 
searching  for  unimaginable  food,  — pei'haps  for  the  tinier 
creature,  whatever  it  is,  that  drew  this  slender  continu 
ous  trail  like  those  made  on  the  wet  beach  by  light 
borderers  of  the  sea.  The  earliest  autographs  were  as 
frail  as  these.  Poseidon  traced  his  lines,  or  giant  birds 
made  their  mark,  on  preadamite  sea-margins ;  and  the 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  43 

thunder-gust  left  the  tear-stains  of  its  sudden  passion 
there  ;  nay,  we  have  the  signatures  of  delicatest  fern- 
leaves  on  the  soft  ooze  of  teons  that  dozed  away  their 
dreamless  leisure  before  consciousness  came  upon  the 
eai-th  with  man.  Some  whim  of  nature  locked  them  fast 
in  stone  for  us  after-thoughts  of  creation.  Which  of  us 
shall  leave  a  footprint  as  imperishable  as  that  of  the 
ornithorhyncus,  or  much  more  so  than  that  of  these 
Bedouins  of  the  snow-desert  1  Perhaps  it  was  only  be 
cause-  the  ripple  and  the  rain-drop  and  the  bird  were  not 
thinking  of  themselves,  that  they  had  such  luck.  The 
chances  of  immortality  depend  very  much  on  that.  How 
often  have  we  not  seen  poor  mortals,  dupes  of  a  season's 
notoriety,  carving  their  names  on  seeming-solid  rock  of 
merest  beach-sand,  whose  feeble  hold  on  memory  shall 
be  washed  away  by  the  next  wave  of  fickle  opinion ! 
Well,  -well,  honest  Jacques,  there  are  better  things  to  be 
found  in  the  snow  than  sermons. 

The  snow  that  falls  damp  comes  commonly  in  larger 
flakes  from  windless  skies,  and  is  the  prettiest  of  all  to 
watch  from  under  cover.  This  is  the  kind  Homer  had 
in  mind  ;  and  Dante,  who  had  never  read  him,  compares 
the  dilatate  falde,  the  flaring  flakes,  of  his  fiery  rain,  to 
those  of  snow  among  the  mountains  without  wind.  This 
sort  of  snowfall  has  no  fight  in  it,  and  does  not  challenge 
you  to  a  wrestle  like  that  which  drives  well  from  the 
northward,  with  all  moisture  thoroughly  winnowed  out 
of  it  by  the  frosty  wind.  Burns,  who  was  more  out  of 
doors  than  most  poets,  and  whose  barefoot  Muse  got  the 
color  in  her  cheeks  by  vigorous  exercise  in  all  weathers, 
was  thinking  of  this  drier  deluge,  when  he  speaks  of  the 
"  whirling  drift,"  and  tells  how 

"  Chanticleer 
Shook  off  the  powthery  snaw." 

But  the  damper  and  more  deliberate  falls  have  a  choice 


44  A   GOOD  WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

knack  at  draping  the  trees ;  and  about  eaves  or  stone 
walls,  wherever,  indeed,  the  evaporation  is  rapid,  and  it 
finds  a  chance  to  cling,  it  will  build  itself  out  in  curves 
of  wonderful  beauty.  I  have  seen  one  of  these  dumb 
waves,  thus  caught  in  the  act  of  breaking,  curl  four  feet 
beyond  the  edge  of  my  roof  and  hang  there  for  days,  as 
if  Nature  were  too  well  pleased  with  her  work  to  let  it 
crumble  from  its  exquisite  pause.  After  such  a  storm, 
if  you  are  lucky  enough  to  have  even  a  sluggish  ditch 
for  a  neighbor,  be  sure  to  pay  it  a  visit.  You  will  find 
its  banks  corniced  with  what  seems  precipitated  light, 
and  the  dark  current  down  below  gleams  as  if  with  an 
inward  lustre.  Dull  of  motion  as  it  is,  you  never  saw 
water  that  seemed  alive  before.  It  has  a  brightness, 
like  that  of  the  eyes  of  some  smaller  animals,  which 
gives  assurance  of  life,  but  of  a  life  foreign  and  unintel 
ligible. 

A  damp  snow-storm  often  turns  to  rain,  and,  in  our 
freakish  climate,  the  wind  will  whisk  sometimes  into  the 
northwest  so  suddenly  as  to  plate  all  the  trees  with  crys 
tal  before  it  has  swept  the  sky  clear  of  its  last  cobweb 
of  cloud.  Ambrose  Philips,  in  a  poetical  epistle  from 
Copenhagen  to  the  Earl  of  Dorset,  describes  this  strange 
confectionery  of  Nature,  —  for  such,  I  am  half  ashamed 
to  say,  it  always  seems  to  me,  recalling  the  "  glorified 
sugar-candy  "  of  Lamb's  first  night  at  the  theatre.  It 
has  an  artificial  air,  altogether  beneath  the  grand  artist 
of  the  atmosphere,  and  besides  does  too  much  mischief 
to  the  trees  for  a  philodendrist  to  take  unmixed  pleasure 
in  it.  Perhaps  it  deserves  a  poet  like  Philips,  who 
really  loved  Nature  and  yet  liked  her  to  be  mighty  fine, 
as  Pepys  would  say,  with  a  heightening  of  powder  and 
rouge  :  — 

"  And  yet  but  lately  have  I  seen  e'en  here 
The  winter  in  a  lovely  dress  appear. 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  45 

Ere  yet  the  clouds  let  fall  the  treasured  snow, 
Or  winds  begun  through  hazy  skies  to  blow, 
At  evening  a  keen  eastern  breeze  arose, 
And  the  descending  rain  unsullied  froze. 
Soon  as  the  silent  shades  of  night  withdrew, 
The  ruddy  noon  disclosed  at  once  to  view 
The  face  of  Nature  in  a  rich  disguise, 
And  brightened  every  object  to  ray  eyes; 
For  every  shrub,  and  every  blade  of  grass, 
And  every  pointed  thorn,  seemed  wrought  in  glass ; 
In  pearls  and  rubies  rich  the  hawthorns  show, 
Anil  through  the  ice  the  crimson  berries  glow ; 
The  thick-sprung  reeds,  which  watery  marshes  yield, 
Seem  polished  lances  in  a  hostile  field ; 
The  stag  in  limpid  currents  with  surprise 
Sees  crystal  branches  on  his  forehead  rise ; 
The  spreading  oak,  the  beech,  the  towering  pine, 
Glazed  over  in  the  freezing  ether  shine ; 
The  frighted  birds  the  rattling  branches  shun, 
Which  wave  and  glitter  in  the  distant  sun, 
When,  if  a  sudden  gust  of  wind  arise, 
The  brittle  forest  into  atoms  flies, 
•    The  crackling  wood  beneath  the  tempest  bends 
And  in  a  spangled  shower  the  prospect  ends." 

It  is  not  uninstructive  to  see  how  tolerable  Ambrose  is, 
so  long  as  he  sticks  manfully  to  what  he  really  saw. 
The  moment  he  undertakes  to  improve  on  Nature  he 
sinks  into  the  mere  court  poet,  and  we  surrender  him  to 
the  jealousy  of  Pope  without  a  sigh.  His  "  rattling 
branches  "  and  "  crackling  forest "  are  good,  as  truth  al 
ways  is  after  a  fashion ;  but  what  shall  we  say  of  that 
dreadful  stag  which,  there  is  little  doubt,  he  valued 
above  all  the  rest,  because  it  was  purely  his  own  1 

The  damper  snow  tempts  the  amateur  architect  and 
sculptor.  His  Pentelicus  has  been  brought  to  his  very 
door,  and  if  there  are  boys  to  be  had  (whose  company 
beats  all  other  recipes  for  prolonging  life)  a  middle-aged 
Master  of  the  Works  will  knock  the  years  off  his  ac 
count  and  make  the  family  Bible  seem  a  dealer  in  foolish 
fables,  by  a  few  hours  given  heartily  to  this  business. 
First  comes  the  Sisyphean  toil  of  rolling  the  clammy 


46  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR    WINTER. 

balls  till  they  refuse  to  budge  farther.  Then,  if  you 
would  play  the  statuary,  they  are  piled  one  upon  the 
other  to  the  proper  height ;  or  if  your  aim  be  masonry, 
•whether  of  house  or  fort,  they  must  be  squared  and 
beaten  solid  with  the  shovel.  The  material  is  capable 
of  very  pretty  effects,  and  your  young  companions  mean 
while  are  unconsciously  learning  lessons  in  aesthetics. 
From  the  feeling  of  satisfaction  with  which  one  squats 
on  the  damp  floor  of  his  extemporized  dwelling,  I  have 
been  led  to  think  that  the  backwoodsman  must  get  a 
sweeter  'savor  of  self-reliance  from  the  house  his  own 
hands  have  built  than  Bramante  or  Sansovino  could  ever 
give.  Perhaps  the  fort  is  the  best  thing,  for  it  calls  out 
more  masculine  qualities  and  adds  the  cheer  of  battle 
•with  that  dumb  artillery  which  gives  pain  enough  to 
test  pluck  without  risk  of  serious  hurt.  Already,  as  I 
write,  it  is  twenty-odd  years  ago.  The  balls  fly  thick 
and  fast.  The  uncle  defends  the  waist-high  ramparts 
against  a  storm  of  nephews,  his  breast  plastered  with 
decorations  like  another  Radetsky's.  How  well  I  recall 
the  indomitable  good-humor  under  fire  of  him  who  fell 
in  the  front  at  Ball's  Bluff,  the  silent  pertinacity  of  the 
gentle  scholar  who  got  his  last  hurt  at  Fair  Oaks,  the 
ardor  in  the  charge  of  the  gallant  gentleman  who,  with 
the  death-wound  in  his  side,  headed  his  brigade  at  Cedar 
Creek  !  How  it  all  comes  back,  and  they  never  come  ! 
I  cannot  again  be  the  Vauban  of  fortresses  in  the  inno 
cent  snow,  but  I  shall  never  see  children  moulding  their 
clumsy  giants  in  it  without  longing  to  help.  It  was  a 
pretty  fancy  of  the  young  Vermont  sculptor  to  make  his 
first  essay  in  this  evanescent  material.  Was  it  a  figure 
of  Youth,  I  wonder  1  Would  it  not  be  well  if  all  artists 
could  begin  in  stuff  as  perishable,  to  melt  away  when  the 
sun  of  prosperity  began  to  shine,  and  leave  nothing  be 
hind  but  the  gain  of  practised  hands .1  It  is  pleasant 


A   GOOD   WORD    FOR    WINTER.  47 

to  fancy  that  Shakespeare  served  his  apprenticeship  at 
this  trade,  and  owed  to  it  that  most  pathetic  of  despair 
ing  wishes,  — 

"  0,  that  I  were  a  mockery-king  of  snow, 
Standing  before  the  sun  of  Bolingbroke, 
To  melt  myself  away  in  water-drops!  " 

I  have  spoken  of  the  exquisite  curves  of  snow  sur 
faces.  Not  less  rare  are  the  tints  of  which  they  are 
capable,  —  the  faint  blue  of  the  hollows,  for  the  shadows 
in  snow  are  always  blue,  and  the  tender  rose  of  higher 
points,  as  you  stand  with  your  back  to  the  setting  sun 
and  look  upward  across  the  soft  rondure  of  a  hillside. 
I  have  seen  within  a  mile  -of  home  effects  of  color  as 
lovely  as  any  iridescence  of  the  Silberhorn  after  sun 
down.  Charles  II.,  who  never  said  a  foolish  thing,  gave 
the  English  climate  the  highest  praise  when  he  said  that 
it  allowed  you  more  hours  out  of  doors  than  any  other, 
and  I  think  our  winter  may  fairly  make  the  same  boast 
as  cornpared  with  the  rest  of  the.  year.  Its  still  morn 
ings,  with  the  thermometer  near  zero,  put  a  premium  on 
walking.  There  is  more  sentiment  in  turf,  perhaps,  and 
it  is  more  elastic  to  the  foot ;  its  silence,  too,  is  wellnigh 
as  congenial  with  meditation  as  that  of  fallen  pine-tassel; 
but  for  exhilaration  there  is  nothing  like  a  stiff  snow- 
crust  that  creaks  like  a  cricket  at  every  step,  and  com 
municates  its  own  sparkle  to  the  senses.  The  air  you 
drink  isfrappe,  all  its  grosser  particles  precipitated,  and 
the  dregs  of  your  blood  with  them.  A  purer  current 
mounts  to  the  brain,  courses  sparkling  through  it,  and 
rinses  it  thoroughly  of  all  dejected  stuff.  There  is 
nothing  left  to  breed  an  exhalation  of  ill-humor  or 
despondency.  They  say  that  this  rarefied  atmosphere 
has  lessened  the  capacity  of  our  lungs.  Be  it  so.  Quart- 
pots  are  for  muddier  liquor  than  nectar.  To  me,  the 
city  in  winter  is  infinitely  dreary,  —  the  sharp  street- 


48  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

corners  have  such  a  chill  in  them,  and  the  snow  so  soon 
loses  its  maidenhood  to  become  a  mere  drab,  —  "  doing 
shameful  things,"  as  Steele  says  of  politicians,  "  without 
being  ashamed."  I  pine  for  the  Quaker  purity  of  my 
country  landscape.  I  am  speaking,  of  course,  of  those 
winters  that  are  not  niggardly  of  snow,  as  ours  too  often 
are,  giving  us  a  gravelly  dust  instead.  Nothing  can  be 
unsightlier  than  those  piebald  fields  where  the  coarse 
brown  hide  of  Earth  shows  through  the  holes  of  her 
ragged  ermine.  But  even  when  there  is  abundance  of 
snow,  I  find  as  I  grow  older  that  there  are  not  so  many 
good  crusts  as  there  used  to  be.  AVhen  I  first  observed 
this,  I  rashly  set  it  to  the  account  of  that  general 
degeneracy  in  nature  (keeping  pace  with  the  same 
melancholy  phenomenon  in  man)  which  forces  itself  up 
on  the  attention  and  into  the  philosophy  of  middle  life. 
But  happening  once  to  be  weighed,  it  occurred  to  me 
that  an  arch  which  would  bear  fifty  pounds  could  hardly 
be  blamed  for  giving  way  under  more  than  three  times 
the  weight.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that  if  theologians 
would  remember  this  in  their  arguments,  and  consider 
that  the  man  may  slump  through,  with  no  fault  of  his 
own,  where  the  boy  would  have  skimmed  the  surface  in 
safety,  it  would  be  better  for  all  parties.  However, 
when  you  do  get  a  crust  that  will  bear,  and  know  any 
brooklet  that  runs  down  a  hillside,  be  sure  to  go  and 
take  a  look  at  him,  especially  if  your  crust  is  due,  as  it 
commonly  is,  to  a  cold  snap  following  eagerly  on  a  thaw. 
You  will  never  find  him  so  cheerful.  As  he  shrank 
away  after  the  last  thaw,  he  built  for  himself  the  most 
exquisite  caverns  of  ice  to  run  through,  if  not  "  measure 
less  to  man"  like  those  of  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  yet 
perhaps  more  pleasing  for  their  narrowness  than  those 
for  their  grandeur.  What  a  cunning  silversmith  is 
Frost!  The  rarest  workmanship  of  Delhi  or  Genoa 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  49 

copies  him  but  clumsily,  as  if  the  fingers  of  all  other 
artists  were  thumbs.  Fernwork  and  lacework  and  fila 
gree  in  endless  variety,  and  under  it  all  the  water  tinkles 
like  a  distant  guitar,  or  drums  like  a  tambourine,  or 
gurgles  like  the  Tokay  of  an  anchorite's  dream.  Be 
yond  doubt  there  is  a  fairy  procession  marching  along 
those  frail  arcades  and  translucent  corridors. 

"  Their  oaten  pipes  blow  wondrous  shrill, 
The  hemlock  small  blow  clear." 

And  hark  !  is  that  the  ringing  of  Titania's  bridle,  or  the 
bells  of  the  wee,  wee  hawk  that  sits  on  Oberon's  wrist  ] 
This  wonder  of  Frost's  handiwork  may  be  had  every 
winter,  but  he  can  do  better  than  this,  though  I  have 
seen  it  but  once  in  my  life.  There  had  been  a  thaw 
without  wind  or  rain,  making  the  air  fat  with  gray  vapor. 
Towards  sundown  came  that  chill,  the  avant-courier  of 
a  northwesterly  gale.  Then,  though  there  was  no  per 
ceptible  current  in  the  atmosphere,  the  fog  began  to 
attach  itself  in  frosty  roots  and  filaments  to  the  southern 
side  of  every  twig  and  grass-stem.  The  very  posts  had 
poems  traced  upon  them  by  this  dumb  minstrel. 
Wherever  the  moist  seeds  found  lodgement  grew  an 

O  O 

inch-deep  moss  fine  as  cobweb,  a  slender  coral-reef, 
argentine,  delicate,  as  of  some  silent  sea  in  the  moon, 
such  as  Agassiz  dredges  when  he  dreams.  The  frost, 
too,  can  wield  a  delicate  graver,  and  in  fancy  leaves 
Piranesi  far  behind.  He  covers  your  window-pane  with 
Alpine  etchings,  as  if  in  memory  of  that  sanctuary  where 
he  finds  shelter  even  in  midsummer. 

Now  look  down  from  your  hillside  across  the  valley. 
The  trees  are  leafless,  but  this  is  the  season  to  study 
their  anatomy,  and  did  you  ever  notice  before  how  much 
color  there  is  in  the  twigs  of  many  of  them  1  And  the 
smoke  from  those  chimneys  is  so  blue  it  seems  like  a 
feeder  of  the  sky  into  which  it  flows.  Winter  refines  it 
3  D 


50  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

and  gives  it  agreeable  associations.  In  summer  it  sug 
gests  cookery  or  the  drudgery  of  steam-engines,  but  now 
your  fancy  (if  it  can  forget  for  a  moment  the  dreary 
usurpation  of  stoves)  traces  it  down  to  the  fireside  and 
the  brightened  faces  of  children.  Thoreau  is  the  only 
poet  who  has  fitly  sung  it.  The  wood-cutter  rises  before 
day  and 

"  First  in  the  dusky  dawn  he  sends  abroad 
His  early  scout,  his  emissary,  smoke, 
The  earliest,  latest  pilgrim  from  his  roof, 
To  fed  the  frosty  air  ;  .... 
And,  while  he  crouches  still  beside  the  hearth, 
Nor  musters  courage  to  unbar  the  door, 
It  has  gone  down  the  glen  with  the  light  wind 
And  o'er  the  plain  unfurled  its  venturous  wreath, 
Draped  the  tree-tops,  loitered  upon  the  hill, 
And  warmed  the  pinions  of  the  early  bird  ; 
And  now,  perchance,  high  in  the  crispy  air, 
Has  caught  sight  of  the  day  o'er  the  earth's  edge, 
And  greets  its  master's  eye  at  his  low  door 
As  some  refulgent  cloud  iu  the  upper  sky." 

Here  is  very  bad  verse  and  very  good  imagination.  He 
had  been  reading  Wordsworth,  or  he  would  not  have 
made  tree-tops  an  iambus.  In  the  Moretum  of  Virgil  (or, 
if  not  his,  better  than  most  of  his)  is  a  pretty  picture 
of  a  peasant  kindling  his  winter-morning  fire.  He  rises 
before  dawn, 

Sollicitaqne  manu  tenebras  explorat  inertes 
Vestigatque  focum  laesus  quern  denique  sensit. 
Parvulus  exusto  remanebat  stipite  fumus, 
Et  cinis  obductse  celabat  lumina  prunse. 
Admovet  his  pronam  submissa  fronte  lucernam, 
Et  producit  acu  stupas  humore  carentes, 
Excitat  et  crebris  langnentem  flatibus  ignem  ; 
Tandem  concepto  tenebrae  fulgore  recedunt, 
Oppositaque  mami  lumen  defendit  ab  aura. 
With  cautions  hand  he  gropes  the  sluggish  dark, 
Tracking  the  hearth  which,  scorched,  he  feels  erelong. 
In  burnt-out  logs  a  slender  smoke  remained, 
And  raked-up  ashes  hid  the  cinders'  eyes ; 
Stooping,  to  these  the  lamp  outstretched  he  nears, 


A   GOOD    WORD    FOR    WINTER.  51 

And,  with  a  needle  loosening  the  dry  wick, 
With  frequent  breath  excites  the  languid  fl'ame. 
Before  the  gathering  glow  the  shades  recede, 
And  his  bent  hand  the  new-caught  light  defends. 

Ovid  heightens  the  picture  by  a  single  touch  : 

Ipse  genu  poito  fiammas  exsuscitat  aura. 
Kneeling,  his  breath  calls  back  to  life  the  flames. 

If  you  walk  down  now  into  the  woods,  you  may  find  a 
robin  or  a  blue-bird  among  the  red-cedars,  or  a  nuthatch 
scaling  deviously  the  trunk  of  some  hardwood  tree  with 
an  eye  as  keen  as  that  of  a  French  soldier  foraging  for 
the  pot-au-feu  of  his  mess.  Perhaps  a  blue-jay  shrills 
cah  cah  in  his  corvine  trebles,  or  a  chickadee 

"  Shows  feats  of  his  gymnastic  play, 
Head  downward,  clinging  to  the  spray." 

But  both  him  and  the  snow-bird  I  love  better  to  see, 
tiny  fluffs  of  feathered  life,  as  they  scurry  about  in  a 
driving  mist  of  snow,  than  in  this  serene  air. 

Coleridge  has  put  into  verse  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
phenomena  of  a  winter  walk  :  — 

"  The  woodman  winding  westward  up  the  glen 
At  wintry  dawn,  where  o'er  the  sheep-track's  maze 
The  viewless  snow-mist  weaves  a  glistening  haze, 
Sees  full  before  him,  gliding  without  tread, 
An  image  with  a  halo  round  its  head." 

But  this  aureole  is  not  peculiar  to  winter.  I  have  noticed 
it  often  in  a  summer  morning,  when  the  grass  was  heavy 
with  dew,  and  even  later  in  the  day,  when  the  dewless 
grass  was  still  fresh  enough  to  have  a  gleam  of  its  own. 
For  my  own  part  I  prefer  a  winter  walk  that  takes  in 
the  nightfall  and  the  intense  silence  that  erelong  follows 
it.  The  evening  lamps  looks  yellower  by  contrast  with 
the  snow,  and  give  the  windows  that  hearty  look  of 
which  our  secretive  fires  have  almost  robbed  them.  Tho 
stars  seem 


52  A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER. 

To  hang,  like  twinkling  winter  lamps, 
Among  the  branches  of  the  leafless  trees," 

or,  if  you  are  on  a  hill-top  (whence  it  is  sweet  to  watch 
the  home-lights  gleam  out  one  by  one),  they  look  nearer 
than  in  summer,  and  appear  to  take  a  conscious  part  in 
the  cold.  Especially  in  one  of  those  stand-stills  of  the 
air  that  forebode  a  change  of  weather,  the  sky  is  dusted 
with  motes  of  fire  of  which  the  summer-watcher  never 
dreamed.  Winter,  too,  is,  on  the  whole,  the  triumphant 
season  of  the  moon,  a  moon  devoid  of  sentiment,  if  you 
choose,  but  with  the  refreshment  of  a  purer  intellectual 
light,  —  the  cooler  orb  of  middle  life.  Who  ever  saw 
anything  to  match  that  gleam,  rather  divined  than  seen, 
which  runs  before  her  over  the  snow,  a  breath  of  light, 
as  she  rises  on  the  infinite  silence  of  winter  night  ?  High 
in  the  heavens,  also  she  seems  to  bring  out  some  intenser 
property  of  cold  with  her  chilly  polish.  The  poets  have 
instinctively  noted  this.  When  Goody  Blake  imprecates 
a  curse  of  perpetual  chill  upon  Harry  Gill,  she  has 

"  The  cold,  cold  moon  above  her  head  " ; 
and  Coleridge  speaks  of 

"  The  silent  icicles, 
Quietly  gleaming  to  the  quiet  moon." 

As  you  walk  homeward,  —  for  it  is  time  that  we  should 
end  our  ramble,  —  you  may  perchance  hear  the  most 
impressive  sound  in  nature,  unless  it  be  the  fall  of  a  tree 
in  the  forest  during  the  hush  of  summer  noon.  It  is  the 
stifled  shriek  of  the  lake  yonder  as  the  frost  throttles  it. 
Wordsworth  has  described  it  (too  much,  I  fear,  hi  the 
style  of  Dr.  Armstrong) :  — 

"  And,  interrupting  oft  that  eager  game, 
From  under  Esthwaite's  splitting  fields  of  ice, 
The  pent-up  air,  straggling  to  free  itself, 
Gave  out  to  meadow-grounds  and  hills  a  loud 
Protracted  yelling,  like  the  noise  of  wolves 
Howling  in  troops  along  the  Bothnic  main." 


A   GOOD   WORD   FOR   WINTER.  53 

Thoreau  (unless  the  English  lakes  have  a  different  dia 
lect  from  ours)  calls  it  admirably  well  a  "  whoop."  But 
it  is  a  noise  like  none  other,  as  if  Demogorgon  were 
moaning  inarticulately  from  under  the  earth.  Let  us 
get  within  doors,  lest  we  hear  it  again,  for  there  is  some 
thing  bodeful  and  uncanny  in  it. 


ON  A  CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN 
FOREIGNERS. 


WALKING  one  day  toward  the  Village,  as  we  used 
to  call  it  in  the  good  old  days  when  almost  every 
dweller  in  the  town  had  been  born  in  it,  I  was  enjoying 
that  delicious  sense  of  disenthralment  from  the  actual 
which  the  deepening  twilight  brings  with  it,  giving 
as  it  does  a,  sort  of  obscure  novelty  to  things  familiar. 
The  coolness,  the  hush,  broken  only  by  the  distant  bleat 
of  some  belated  goat,  querulous  to  be  disburthened  of  her 
milky  load,  the  few  faint  stars,  more  guessed  as  yet  than 
seen,  the  sense  that  the  coming  dark  would  so  soon  fold 
me  in  the  secure  privacy  of  its  disguise, — all  things 
combined  in  a  result  as  near  absolute  peace  as  can  be 
hoped  for  by  a  man  who  knows  that  there  is  a  writ  out 
against  him  in  the  hands  of  the  printer's  devil.  For  the 
moment,  I  was  enjoying  the  blessed  privilege  of  thinking 
without  being  called  on  to  stand  and  deliver  what  I 
thought  to  the  small  public  who  are  good  enough  to  take 
any  interest  therein.  I  love  old  ways,  and  the  path  I 
was  walking  felt  kindly  to  the  feet  it  had  known  for  al 
most  fifty  years.  How  many  fleeting  impressions  it  had 
shared  with  me  !  How  many  times  I  had  lingered  to 
study  the  shadows  of  the  leaves  mezzotinted  upon  the 
turf  that  edged  it  by  the  moon,  of  the  bare  boughs  etched 
with  a  touch  beyond  Rembrandt  by  the  same  unconscious 
artist  on  the  smooth  page  of  snow  !  If  I  tunied  round, 
through  dusky  tree-gaps  came  the  first  twinkle  of  even- 


ON  A  CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS.     55 

ing  lamps  in  the  dear  old  homestead.  On  Corey's  hill  I 
could  see  these  tiny  pharoses  of  love  and  home  and  sweet 
domestic  thoughts  flash  out  one  by  one  across  the  black 
ening  salt-meadow  between.  How  much  has  not  kerosene 
added  to  the  cheerfulness  of  our  evening  landscape  !  A 
pair  of  night-herons  flapped  heavily  over  me  toward  the 
hidden  river.  The  war  was  ended.  I  might  walk  town- 
ward  without  that  aching  dread  of  bulletins  that  had 
darkened  the  July  sunshine  and  twice  made  the  scarlet 
leaves  of  October  seem  stained  with  blood.  I  remem 
bered  with  a  pang,  half-proud,  half-painful,  how,  so  many 
years  ago,  I  had  walked  over  the  same  path  and  felt 
round  my  finger  the  soft  pressure  of  a  little  hand  that 
was  one  day  to  harden  with  faithful  grip  of  sabre.  On 
how  many  paths,  leading  to  how  many  homes  where  proud 
Memory  does  all  she  can  to  fill  up  the  fireside  gaps  with 
shining  shapes,  must  not  men  be  walking  in  just  such 
pensive  mood  as  1 1  Ah,  young  heroes,  safe  in  immortal 
youth  as  those  of  Homer,  you  at  least  carried  your  ideal 
hence  untarnished  !  It  is  locked  for  you  beyond  moth  or 
rust  in  the  treasure-chamber  of  Death. 

Is  not  a  country,  I  thought,  that  has  had  such  as  they 
in  it,  that  could  give  such  as  they  a  brave  joy  in  dying 
for  it,  worth  something,  then  1  And  as  I  felt  more  and 
more  the  soothing  magic  of  evening's  cool  palm  upon  my 
temples,  as  my  fancy  came  home  from  its  revery,  and  my 
senses,  with  reawakened  curiosity,  ran  to  the  front  win 
dows  again  from  the  viewless  closet  of  abstraction,  and 
felt  a  strange  charm  in  finding  the  old  tree  and  shabby 
fence  still  there  under  the  travesty  of  falling  night,  nay, 
were  conscious  of  an  unsuspected  newness  in  familiar 
stars  and  the  fading  outlines  of  hills  my  earliest  horizon, 
I  was  conscious  of  an  immortal  soul,  and  could  not  but 
rejoice  in  the  unwaning  goodliness  of  the  world  into  which 
I  had  been  born  without  any  merit  of  my  own.  I  thought 


56    ON  A  CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS. 

of  dear  Henry  Vaughan's  rainbow,  "  Still  young  and 
fine  !  "  I  remembered  people  who  had  to  go  over  to  the 
Alps  to  learn  what  the  divine  silence  of  snow  was,  who 
must  run  to  Italy  before  they  were  conscious  of  the  mir 
acle  wrought  every  day  under  their  very  noses  by  the 
sunset,  who  must  call  upon  the  Berkshire  hills  to  teach 
them  what  a  painter  autumn  was,  while  close  at  hand 
the  Fresh  Pond  meadows  made  all  oriels  cheap  with 
hues  that  showed  as  if  a  sunset-cloud  had  been  wrecked 
among  their  maples.  One  might  be  worse  off  than  even 
in  America,  I  thought.  There  are  some  things  so  elastic 
that  even  the  heavy  roller  of  democracy  cannot  flatten 
them  altogether  down.  The  mind  can  weave  itself 
warmly  in  the  cocoon  of  its  own  thoughts  and  dwell  a 
hermit  anywhere.  A  country  without  traditions,  with 
out  ennobling  associations,  a  scramble  of  parvenus,  with 
a  horrible  consciousness  of  shoddy  running  through  poli 
tics,  manners,  art,  literature,  nay,  religion  itself?  I  con 
fess,  it  did  not  seem  so  to  me  there  in  that  illimitable 
quiet,  that  serene  self-possession  of  nature,  where  Collins 
might  have  brooded  his  "  Ode  to  Evening,"  or  where 
those  verses  on  Solitude  in  Dodsley's  Collection,  that 
Hawthorne  liked  so  much,  might  have  been  composed. 
Traditions  1  Granting  that  we  had  none,  all  that  is  worth 
having  in  them  is  the  common  property  of  the  soul,  — 
an  estate  in  gavelkind  for  all  the  sons  of  Adam,  —  and, 
moreover,  if  a  man  cannot  stand  on  his  two  feet  (the 
prime  quality  of  whoever  has  left  any  tradition  behind 
him),  were  it  not  better  for  him  to  be  honest  about  it  at 
once,  and  go  down  on  all  fours  1  And  for  associations,  if 
one  have  not  the  wit  to  make  them  for  himself  out  of  his 
native  earth,  110  ready-made  ones  of  other  men  will  avail 
him  much.  Lexington  is  none  the  worse  to  me  for  not 
being  in  Greece,  nor  Gettysburg  that  its  name  is  not 
Marathon.  "Blessed  old  fields,"  I  was  just  exclaiming 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS.    57 

to  myself,  like  one  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  heroes,  "  dear  acres, 
innocently  secure  from  history,  which  these  eyes  first  be 
held,  may  you  be  also  those  to  which  they  shall  at  last 
slowly  darken  !  "  when  I  was  interrupted  by  a  voice 
which  asked  me  in  German  whether  I  was  the  Herr  Pro 
fessor,  Doctor,  So-and-so  1  The  "  Doctor  "  was  by  brevet 
or  vaticination,  to  make  the  grade  easier  to  my  pocket. 

One  feels  so  intimately  assured  that  he  is  made  up, 
in  part,  of  shreds  and  leavings  of  the  past,  in  part  of 
the  interpolations  of  other  people,  that  an  honest  man 
would  be  slow  in  saying  yes  to  such  a  question.  But 
"  my  name  is  So-and-so  "  is  a  safe  answer,  and  I  gave  it. 
While  I  had  been  romancing  with  myself,  the  street- 
lamps  had  been  lighted,  and  it  was  under  one  of  these 
detectives  that  have  robbed  the  Old  Road  of  its  privilege 
of  sanctuary  after  nightfall  that  I  was  ambushed  by  my 
foe.  The  inexorable  villain  had  taken  my  description,  it 
appears,  that  I  might  have  the  less  chance  to  escape 
him.  Dr.  Holmes  tells  us  that  we  change  our  substance, 
not  every  seven  years,  as  was  once  believed,  but  with 
every  breath  we  draw.  Why  had  I  not  the  wit  to  avail 
myself  of  the  subterfuge,  and,  like  Peter,  to  renounce 
my  identity,  especially,  as  in  certain  moods  of  mind,  I 
have  often  more  than  doubted  of  it  myself?  When  a 
man  is,  as  it  were,  his  own  front-door,  and  is  thus 
knocked  at,  why  may  he  not  assume  the  right  of  that 
sacred  wood  to  make  every  house  a  castle,  by  denying 
himself  to  all  visitations'?  I  was  truly  not  at  home 
when  the  question  was  put  to  me,  but  had  to  recall  my 
self  from  all  out-of-doors,  and  to  piece  my  self-conscious 
ness  hastily  together  as  well  as  I  could  before  I  an 
swered  it. 

I  knew  perfectly  well  what  was  coming.  It  is  seldom 
that  debtors  or  good  Samaritans  waylay  people  under 
gas-lamps  in  order  to  force  money  upon  them,  so  far  as  I 


55   ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS. 

have  seen  or  heard.  I  was  also  aware,  from  considerable 
experience,  that  every  foreigner  is  persuaded  that,  by 
doing  this  country  the  favor  of  coming  to  it,  he  has  laid 
every  native  thereof  under  an  obligation,  pecuniary  or 
other,  as  the  case  may  be,  whose  discharge  he  is  entitled- 
to  on  demand  duly  made  in  person  or  by  letter.  Too 
much  learning  (of  this  kind)  had  made  me  mad  in  the 
provincial  sense  of  the  word.  I  had  begun  life  with  the 
theory  of  giving  something  to  every  beggar  that  came 
along,  though  sure  of  never  finding  a  native-born  coun 
tryman  among  them.  In  a  small  way,  I  was  resolved 
to  emulate  Hatem  Tai's  tent,  with  its  three  hundred 
and  sixty-five  entrances,  one  for  every  day  in  the  year, 
—  I  know  not  whether  he  was  astronomer  enough  to 
add  another  for  leap-years.  The  beggars  were  a  kind 
of  German-silver  aristocracy ;  not  real  plate,  to  be  sure, 
but  better  than  nothing.  Where  everybody  was  over 
worked,  they  supplied  the  comfortable  equipoise  of 
absolute  leisure,  so  aesthetically  needful.  Besides,  I  was 
but  too  conscious  of  a  vagrant  fibre  in  myself,  which  too 
often  thrilled  me  in  my  solitary  walks  with  the  temp 
tation  to  wander  on  into  infinite  space,  and  by  a  single 
spasm  of  resolution  to  emancipate  myself  from  the 
drudgery  of  prosaic  serfdom  to  respectability  and  J;he 
regular  course  of  things.  This  prompting  has  been  at 
times  my  familiar  demon,  and  I  could  not  but  feel  a 
kind  of  respectful  sympathy  for  men  who  had  dared 
what  I  had  only  sketched  out  to  myself  as  a  splendid 
possibility.  For  seven  years  I  helped  maintain  one 
heroic  man  on  an  imaginary  journey  to  Portland,  —  as 
fine  an  example  as  I  have  ever  known  of  hopeless  loyalty 
to  an  ideal.  I  assisted  another  so  long  in  a  fruitless 
attempt  to  reach  Mecklenburg-Schwerin,  that  at  last  we 
grinned  in  each  other's  faces  when  we  met,  like  a  couple 
of  augurs.  He  was  possessed  by  this  harmless  mania 


ON  A   CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS.   59 

as  some  are  by  the  North  Pole,  and  I  shall  never  forget 
his  look  of  regretful  compassion  (as  for  one  who  was 
sacrificing  his  higher  life  to  the  fleshpots  of  Egypt)  when 
I  at  last  advised  him  somewhat  strenuously  to  go  to  the 

D ,  whither  the  road  was  so  much  travelled  that  he 

could  not  miss  it.  General  Banks,  in  his  noble  zeal  for 
the  honor  of  his  country,  would  confer  on  the  Secretary 
of  'State  the  power  of  imprisoning,  in  case  of  war,  all 
these  seekers  of  the  unattainable,  thus  by  a  stroke  of 
the  pen  annihilating  the  single  poetic  element  in  our 
humdrum  life.  Alas  !  not  everybody  has  the  genius  to 
be  a  Bobbin-Boy,  or  doubtless  all  these  also  would  have 
chosen  that  more  prosperous  line  of  life  !  But  moralists, 
sociologists,  political  economists,  and  taxes  have  slowly 
convinced  me  that  my  beggarly  sympathies  were  a  sin 
against  society.  Especially  was  the  Buckle  doctrine  of 
averages  (so  flattering  to  our  free-will)  persuasive  with 
me  ;  for  as  there  must  be  in  every  year  a  certain  num 
ber  who  would  bestow  an  alms  on  these  abridged  edi 
tions  of  the  Wandering  Jew,  the  withdrawal  of  my  quota 
could  make  no  possible  difference,  since  some  destined 
proxy  must  always  step  forward  to  fill  my  gap.  Just 
so  many  misdirected  letters  every  year  and  no  more  ! 
Would  it  were  as  easy  to  reckon  up  the  number  of  men 
on  whose  backs  fate  has  written  the  wrong  address,  so 
that  they  arrive  by  mistake  in  Congress  and  other  places 
where  they  do  not  belong!  May  not  these  wanderers 
of  whom  I  speak  have  been  sent  into  the  world  without 
any  proper  address  at  all?  Where  is  our  Dead-Letter 
Office  for  such]  And  if  wiser  social  arrangements 
should  furnish  us  with  something  of  the  sort,  fancy 
(horrible  thought !)  how  many  a  workingman's  friend 
(a  kind  of  industry  in  which  the  labor  is  light  and  the 
wages  heavy)  wrould  be  sent  thither  because  not  called 
for  in  the  office  where  he  at  present  lies ! 


60   ON  A   CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS. 

But  I  am  leaving  my  new  acquaintance  too  long  under 
the  lamp-post.  The  same  Gano  which  had  betrayed  me 
to  him  revealed  to  me  a  well-set  young  man  of  about 
half  my  own  age,  as  well  dressed,  so  far  as  I  could  see, 
as  I  was,  and  with  every  natural  qualification  for  getting 
his  own  livelihood  as  good,  if  not  better,  than  my  own. 
He  had  been  reduced  to  the  painful  necessity  of  calling 
upon  me  by  a  series  of  crosses  beginning  with  the  Baden 
Revolution  (for  which,  I  own,  he  seemed  rather  young, 
—  but  perhaps  he  referred  to  a  kind  of  revolution  prac 
tised  every  season  at  Baden-Baden),  continued  by  re-' 
peated  failures  in  business,  for  amounts  which  must 
convince  me  of  his  entire  respectability,  and  ending  with 
our  Civil  War.  During  the  latter,  he  had  served  with 
distinction  as  a  soldier,  taking  a  main  part  in  every  im 
portant  battle,  with  a  rapid  list  of  which  he  favored  me, 
and  no  doubt  would  have  admitted  that,  impartial  as 
Jonathan  Wild's  great  ancestor,  he  had  been  on  both 
sides,  had  I  baited  him  with  a  few  hints  of  conservative 
opinions  on  a  subject  so  distressing  to  a  gentleman  wish 
ing  to  profit  by  one's  sympathy  and  unhappily  doubtful 
as  to  which  way  it  might  lean.  For  all  these  reasons, 
and,  as  he  seemed  to  imply,  for  his  merit  in  consenting 
to  be  born  in  Germany,  he  considered  himself  my  natural 
creditor  to  the  extent  of  five  dollars,  which  he  would 
handsomely  consent  to  accept  in  greenbacks,  though  he 
preferred  specie.  The  offer  was  certainly  a  generous 
one,  and  the  claim  presented  with  an  assurance  that 
carried  conviction.  But,  unhappily,  I  had  been  led  to 
remark  a  curious  natural  phenomenon.  If  I  was  ever 
weak  enough  to  give  anything  to  a  petitioner  of  what 
ever  nationality,  it  always  rained  decayed  compatriots 
of  his  for  a  month  after.  Post  hoc  ergo  propter  hoc  may 
not  be  always  safe  logic,  but  here  I  seemed  to  perceive  a 
natural  connection  of  cause  and  effect.  Now,  a  few  days 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS.   61 

before  I  had  been  so  tickled  with  a  paper  (professedly 
written  by  a  benevolent  American  clergyman)  certifying 
that  the  bearer,  a  hard-working  German,  had  long 
"  sofered  with  rheumatic  paints  in  his  limps,"  that,  after 
copying  the  passage  into  my  note-book,  I  thought  it  but 
fair  to  pay  a  trifling  honorarium  to  the  author.  I  had 
pulled  the  string  of  the  shower-bath  !  It  had  been  run 
ning  shipwrecked  sailors  for  some  time,  but  forthwith  it 
began  to  pour  Teutons,  redolent  of  lager-bier.  I  could 
not  help  associating  the  apparition  of  my  new  friend 
with  this  series  of  otherwise  unaccountable  phenomena. 
I  accordingly  made  up  my  mind  to  deny  the  debt,  and 
modestly  did  so,  pleading  a  native  bias  towards  impecu- 
niosity  to  the  full  as  strong  as  his  own.  He  took  a  high 
tone  with  me  at  once,  such  as  an  honest  man  would 
naturally  take  with  a  confessed  repudiator.  He  even 
brought  down  his  proud  stomach  so  far  as  to  join  him 
self  to  me  for  the  rest  of  my  townward  walk,  that  he 
might  give  me  his  views  of  the  American  people,  and 
thus  inclusively  of  myself. 

I  know  not  whether  it  is  because  I  am  pigeon-livered 
and  lack  gall,  or  whether  it  is  from  an  overmastering 
sense  of  drollery,  but  I  am  apt  to  submit  to  such  bast 
ings  with  a  patience  which  afterwards  surprises  me, 
being  not  without  my  share  of  warmth  in  the  blood. 
Perhaps  it  is  because  I  so  often  meet  with  young  per 
sons  who  know  vastly  more  than  I  do,  and  especially  with 
so  many  foreigners  whose  knowledge  of  this  country  is 
superior  to  my  own.  However  it  may  be,  I-  listened  for 
some  time  with  tolerable  composure  as  my  self-appointed 
lecturer  gave  me  in  detail  his  opinions  of  my  country 
and  its  people.  America,  he  informed  me,  was  without 
arts,  science,  literature,  culture,  or  any  native  hope  of 
supplying  them.  We  were  a  people  wholly  given  to 
money-getting,  and  who,  having  got  it,  knew  no  other 


62    ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS. 

use  for  it  than  to  hold  it  fast.  I  am  fain  to  confess  that 
I  felt  a  sensible  itching  of  the  biceps,  and  that  my  fingers 
closed  with  such  a  grip  as  he  had  just  informed  me  was 
one  of  the  effects  of  our  unhappy  climate.  But  happen 
ing  just  then  to  be  where  I  could  avoid  temptation  by 
dodging  down  a  by-street,  I  hastily  left  him  to  finish  his 
diatribe  to  the  lamp-post,  which  could  stand  it  better 
than  I.  That  young  man  will  never  know  how  near 
he  came  to  being  assaulted  by  a  respectable  gentleman 
of  middle  age,  at  the  corner  of  Church  Street.  I  have 
never  felt  quite  satisfied  that  I  did  all  my  duty  by  him 
in  not  knocking  him  down.  But  perhaps  he  might  have 
knocked  me  down,  and  then  ] 

The  capacity  of  indignation  makes  an  essential  part 
of  the  outfit  of  every  honest  man,  but  I  am  inclined  to 
doubt  whether  he  is  a  wise  one  who  allows  himself  to  act 
upon  its  first  hints.  It  shoiild  be  rather,  I  suspect,  a 
latent  heat  in  the  blood,  which  makes  itself  felt  in 
character,  a  steady  reserve  for  the  brain,  warming  the 
ovum  of  thought  to  life,  rather  than  cooking  it  by  a  too 
hasty  enthusiasm  in  reaching  the  boiling-point.  As  my 
pulse  gradually  fell  back  to  its  normal  beat,  I  reflected 
that  I  had  been  uncomfortably  near  making  a  fool  of 
myself,  —  a  handy  salve  of  euphuism  for  our  vanity, 
though  it  does  not  always  make  a  just  allowance  to 
Nature  for  her  share  in  the  business.  What  possible 
claim  had  my  Teutonic  friend  to  rob  me  of  my  compo 
sure]  I  am  not,  I  think,  specially  thin-skinned  as  to 
other  people's  opinions  of  myself,  having,  as  I  conceive, 
later  and  fuller  intelligence  on  that  point  than  anybody 
else  can  give  me.  Life  is  continually  weighing  us  in 
very  sensitive  scales,  and  telling  every  one  of  iis  pre 
cisely  what  his  real  weight  is  to  the  last  grain  of  dust. 
Whoever  at  fifty  does 'not  rate  himself  quite  as  low  as 
most  of  his  acquaintance  would  be  likely  to  put  him, 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS.  63 

must  be  either  a  fool  or  a  great  man,  and  I  humbly  dis 
claim  being  either.  But  if  I  was  not  smarting  in  per 
son  from  any  scattering  shot  of  my  late  companion's 
commination,  why  should  I  grow  hot  at  any  implication 
of  my  country  therein  1  Surely  her  shoulders  are  broad 
enough,  if  yours  or  mine  are  not,  to  bear  up  under  a 
considerable  avalanche  of  this  kind.  It  is  the  bit  of 
truth  in  every  slander,  the  hint  of  likeness  in  every 
caricature,  that  makes  us  smart.  "  Art  thou  there,  old 
Truepenny]"  How  did  your  blade  know  its  way  so 
well  to  that  one  loose  rivet  in  our  armor  1  I  wondered 
whether  Americans  were  over-sensitive  in  this  respect, 
whether  they  were  more  touchy  than  other  folks.  On 
the  whole,  I  thought  we  were  not.  Plutarch,  who  at  least 
had  studied  philosophy,  if  he  had  not  mastered  it,  could 
not  stomach  something  Herodotus  had  said  of  Boeotia, 
and  devoted  an  essay  to  showing  up  the  delightful  old 
traveller's  malice  and  ill-breeding.  French  editors  leave 
out  of  Montaigne's  "  Travels  "  some  remarks  of  his  about 
France,  for  reasons  best  known  to  themselves.  Pachy 
dermatous  Deutschland,  covered  with  trophies  from 
every  field  of  letters,  still  winces  under  that  question 
which  Pere  Bouhours  put  two  centuries  ago,  Si  un  Alle- 
mand  pent  etre  bel-esprit  ?  John  Bull  grew  apoplectic 
with  angry  amazement  at  the  audacious  persiflage  of 
Piickler-Muskau.  To  be  sure,  he  was  a  prince,  —  but 
that  was  not  all  of  it,  for  a  chance  phrase  of  gentle 
Hawthorne  sent  a  spasm  through  all  the  journals  of 
England.  Then  this  tenderness  is  not  peculiar  to  us  ? 
Console  yourself,  dear  man  and  brother,  whatever  you 
may  be  sure  of,  be  sure  at  least  of  this,  that  you  are 
dreadfully  like  other  people.  Human  nature  has  a 
much  greater  genius  for  sameness  than  for  originality, 
or  the  world  would  be  at  a  sad  pass  shortly.  The  sur 
prising  thing  is  that  men  have  such  a  taste  for  this 


64  ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS. 

somewhat  musty  flavor,  that  an  Englishman,  for  exam 
ple,  should  feel  himself  defrauded,  nay,  <  even  outraged, 
when  he  comes  over  here  and  finds  a  people  speaking 
what  he  admits  to  be  something  like  English,  and  yet 
so  very  different  from  (or,  as  he  would  say,  to)  those 
he  left  at  home.  Nothing,  I  am  sure,  equals  my  thank 
fulness  when  I  meet  an  Englishman  who  is  not  like 
every  other,  or,  I  may  add,  un  American  of  the  same 
odd  turn. 

Certainly  it  is  no  shame  to  a  man  that  he  should  be 
as  nice  about  his  country  as  about  his  sweetheart,  and 
who  ever  heard  even  the  friendliest  appreciation  of  that 
unexpressive  she  that  did  not  seem  to  fall  infinitely 
short  ?  Yet  it  would  hardly  be  wise  to  hold  every  one 
an  enemy  who  could  not  see  her  with  our  own  enchanted 
eyes.  It  seems  to  be  the  common  opinion  of  foreigners 
that  Americans  are  too  tender  upon  this  point.  Per 
haps  we  are  ;  and  if  so,  there  must  be  a  reason  for  it. 
Have  we  had  fair  play  ?  Could  the  eyes  of  what  is 
called  Good  Society  (though  it  is  so  seldom  true  either  to 
the  adjective  or  noun)  look  upon  a  nation  of  democrats 
with  any  chance  of  receiving  an  undistorted  image  1 
Were  not  those,  moreover,  who  found  in  the  old  order 
of  things  an  earthly  paradise,  paying  them  quarterly 
dividends  for  the  wisdom  of  their  ancestors,  with  the 
punctuality  of  the  seasons,  unconsciously  bribed  to  mis 
understand  if  not  to  misrepresent  us  1  Whether  at  war 
or  at  peace,  there  we  were,  a  standing  menace  to  all 
earthly  paradises  of  that  kind,  fatal  underminers  of  the 
very  credit  on  which  the  dividends  were  based,  all  the 
more  hateful  and  terrible  that  our  destructive  agency  was 
so  insidious,  working  invisible  in  the  elements,  as  it 
seemed,  active  while  they  slept,  and  coming  upon  them  in 
the  darkness  like  an  armed  man.  Could  Laius  have  the 
proper  feelings  of  a  father  towards  CEdipus,  announced 


ON   A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS.    65 

as  his  destined  destroyer  by  infallible  oracles,  and  felt  to 
be  such  by  every  conscious  fibre  of  his  soul  1  For  more 
than  a  century  the  Dutch  were  the  laughing-stock  of 
polite  Europe.  They  were  butter-firkins,  swillers  of  beer 
and  schnaps,  and  their  vrouws  from  whom  Holbein  painted 
the  ail-but  loveliest  of  Madonnas,  Rembrandt  the  grace 
ful  girl  who  sits  immortal  on  his  knee  in  Dresden,  and 
Rubens  his  abounding  goddesses,  were  the  synonymes 
of  clumsy  vulgarity.  Even  so  late  as  Irving  the  ships 
of  the  greatest  navigators  in  the  world  were  represented 
as  sailing  equally  well  stern-foremost.  That  the  aristo 
cratic  Venetians  should  have 

"  Riveted  with  gigantic  piles 
Thorough  the  centre  their  new-catched  miles," 

was  heroic.  But  the  far  more  marvellous  achievement 
of  the  Dutch  in  the  same  kind  was  ludicrous  even  to  re 
publican  Marvell.  Meanwhile,  during  that  very  century 
of  scorn,  they  were  the  best  artists,  sailors,  merchants, 
bankers,  printers,  scholars,  jurisconsults,  and  statesmen 
in  Europe,  and  the  genius  of  Motley  has  revealed  them 
to  us,  earning  a  right  to  themselves  by  the  most  heroic 
struggle  in  human  annals.  But,  alas !  they  were  not 
merely  simple  burghers  who  had  fairly  made  themselves 
High  Mightinesses,  and  could  treat  on  equal  terms  with 
anointed  kings,  but  their  commonwealth  carried  in  its 
bosom  the  germs  of  democracy.  They  even  unmuzzled, 
at  least  after  dark,  that  dreadful  mastiff,  the  Press, 
whose  scent  is,  or  ought  to  be,  so  keen  for  wolves  in 
sheep's  clothing  and  for  certain  other  animals  in  lions' 
skins.  They  made  fun  of  Sacred  Majesty,  and,  what  was 
worse,  managed  uncommonly  well  without  it.  In  an 
age  when  periwigs  made  so  large  a  part  of  the  natural 
dignity  of  man,  people  with  such  a  turn  of  mind  were 
dangerous.  How  could  they  seem  other  than  vulgar  and 
hateful ] 

E 


66   ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS. 

In  the  natural  course  of  things  we  succeeded  to  this 
unenviable  position  of  general  butt.  The  Dutch  had 
thriven  under  it  pretty  well,  and  there  was  hope  that  we 
could  at  least  contrive  to  worry  along.  And  we  certainly 
did  in  a  very  redoubtable  fashion.  Perhaps  we  deserved 
some  of  the  sarcasm  more  than  our  Dutch  predecessors 
in  office.  We  had  nothing  to  boast  of  in  arts  or  letters, 
and  were  given  to  bragging  overmuch  of  our  merely  ma 
terial  prosperity,  due  quite  as  much  to  the  virtue  of  our 
continent  as  to  our  own.  There  was  some  truth  in  Car- 
lyle's  sneer,  after  all.  Till  we  had  succeeded  in  some 
higher  way  than  this,  we  had  only  the  success  of  physical 
growth.  Our  greatness,  like  that  of  enormous  Russia, 
was  greatness  on  the  map,  —  barbarian  mass  only  ;  but 
had  we  gone  down,  like  that  other  Atlantis,  in  some  vast 
cataclysm,  we  should  have  covered  but  a  pin's  point  on 
the  chart  of  memory,  compared  with  those  ideal  spaces 
occupied  by  tiny  Attica  and  cramped  England.  At  the 
same  time,  our  critics  somewhat  too  easily  forgot  that 
material  must  make  ready  the  foundation  for  ideal  tri 
umphs,  that  the  arts  have  no  chance  in  poor  countries. 
But  it  must  be  allowed  that  democracy  stood  for  a  great 
deal  in  our  shortcoming.  The  Edinburgh  Review  never 
would  have  thought  of  asking,  "  Who  reads  a  Russian 
book  1 "  and  England  was  satisfied  with  iron  from  Sweden 
without  being  impertinently  inquisitive  after  her  painters 
and  statuaries.  Was  it  that  they  expected  too  much 
from  the  mere  miracle  of  Freedom  1  Is  it  not  the  highest 
art  of  a  Republic  to  make  men  of  flesh  and  blood,  and 
not  the  marble  ideals  of  such  ?  It  may  be  fairly  doubted 
whether  we  have  produced  this  higher  type  of  man  yet. 
Perhaps  it  is  the  collective,  not  the  individual,  humanity 
that  is  to  have  a  chance  of  nobler  development  among 
us.  We  shall  see.  We  have  a  vast  amount  of  imported 
ignorance,  and,  still  worse,  of  native  ready-made  knowl- 


ON  A  CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS.  67 

edge,  to  digest  before  even  the  preliminaries  of  such  a 
consummation  can  be  arranged.  We  have  got  to  learn 
that  statesmanship  is  the  most  complicated  of  all  arts, 
and  to  come  back  to  the  apprenticeship-system  too  hastily 
abandoned.  At  present,  we  trust  a  man  with  making 
constitutions  on  less  proof  of  competence  than  \ve  should 
demand  before  we  gave  him  our  shoe  to  patch.  We  have 
nearly  reached  the  limit  of  the  reaction  from  the  old 
notion,  which  paid  too  much  regard  to  birth  and  station 
as  qualifications  for  office,  and  have  touched  the  extreme 
point  in  the  opposite  direction,  putting  the  highest  of 
human  functions  up  at  auction  to  be  bid  for  by  any 
creature  capable  of  going  upright  on  two  legs.  In  some 
places,  we  have  arrived  at  a  point  at  which  civil  society 
is  no  longer  possible,  and  already  another  reaction  has 
begun,  not  backwards  to  the  old  system,  but  towards  fit 
ness  either  from  natural  aptitude  or  special  training. 
But  will  it  always  be  safe  to  let  evils  work  their  own 
cure  by  becoming  unendurable  1  Every  one  of  them 
leaves  its  taint  in  the  constitution  of  the  body-politic, 
each  in  itself,  perhaps,  trifling,  yet  all  together  powerful 
for  evil. 

But  whatever  we  might  do  or  leave  undone,  we  were 
not  genteel,  and  it  was  uncomfortable  to  be  continually 
reminded  that,  though  we  should  boast  that  we  were  the 
Great  West  till  we  were  black  in  the  face,  it  did  not  bring 
us  an  inch  nearer  to  the  world's  West-End.  That  sacred 
enclosure  of  respectability  was  tabooed  to  us.  The  Holy 
Alliance  did  not  inscribe  us  on  its  visiting-list.-  The  Old 
World  of  wigs  and  orders  and  liveries  would  shop  with 
us,  but  we  must  ring  at  the  area-bell,  and  not  venture  to 
awaken  the  more  august  clamors  of  the  knocker.  Our 
manners,  it  must  be  granted,  had  none  of  those  graces 
that  stamp  the  caste  of  Vere  de  Vere,  in  whatever  mu 
seum  of  British  antiquities  they  may  be  hidden.  In 
short,  we  were  vulgar. 


68  ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS. 

This  was  one  of  those  horribly  vague  accusations,  the 
victim  of  which  has  no  defence.  An  umbrella  is  of  no 
avail  against  a  Scotch  mist.  It  envelops  you,  it  pene 
trates  at  every  pore,  it  wets  you  through  without  seem 
ing  to  wet  you  at  all.  Vulgarity  is  an  eighth  deadly  sin, 
added  to  the  list  in  these  latter  days,  and  worse  than  all 
the  others  put  together,  since  it  perils  your  salvation  in 
this  world,  —  far  the  more  important  of  the  two  in  the 
minds  of  most  men.  It  profits  nothing  to  draw  nice  dis 
tinctions  between  essential  and  conventional,  for  the  con 
vention  in  this  case  is  the  essence,  and  you  may  break 
every  command  of  the  decalogue  with  perfect  good-breed 
ing,  nay,  if  you  are  adroit,  without  losing  caste.  We, 
indeed,  had  it  not  to  lose,  for  we  had  never  gained  it. 
"How  am  I  vulgar1?"  asks  the  culprit,  shudderingly. 
"  Because  thou  art  not  like  unto  Us,"  answers  Lucifer, 
Son  of  the  Morning,  and  there  is  no  more  to  be  said. 
The  god  of  this  world  may  be  a  fallen  angel,  but  he  has 
us  there  !  We  were  as  clean,  —  so  far  as  my  observation 
goes,  I  think  we  were  cleaner,  morally  and  physically, 
than  the  English,  and  therefore,  of  course,  than  every 
body  else.  But  we  did  not  pronounce  the  diphthong  ou 
as  they  did,  and  we  said  eether  and  not  eyther,  following 
therein  the  fashion  of  our  ancestors,  who  unhappily  could 
bring  over  no  English  better  than  Shakespeare's  ;  and  we 
did  not  stammer  as  they  had  learned  to  do  from  the 
courtiers,  who  in  this  way  nattered  the  Hanoverian  king, 
a  foreigner  among  the  people  he  had  come  to  reign  over. 
Worse  than  all,  we  might  have  the  noblest  ideas  and 
the  finest  sentiments  in  the  world,  but  we  vented  them 
through  that  organ  by  which  men  are  led  rather  than 
leaders,  though  some  physiologists  would  persuade  us 
that  Nature  furnishes  her  captains  with  a  fine  handle  to 
their  faces  that  Opportunity  may  get  a  good  purchase  on 
them  for  dragging  them  to  the  front. 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS.   69 

This  state  of  things  was  so  painful  that  excellent 
people  were  not  wanting  who  gave  their  whole  genius  to 
reproducing  here  the  original  Bull,  whether  by  gaiters, 
the  cut  of  their  whiskers,  by  a  factitious  brutality  in  their 
tone,  or  by  an  accent  that  was  forever  tripping  and  fall 
ing  flat  over  the  tangled  roots  of  our  common  tongue. 
Martyrs  to  a  false  ideal,  it  never  occurred  to  them  that 
nothing  is  more  hateful  to  gods  and  men  than  a  second- 
rate  Englishman,  and  for  the  very  reason  that  this  planet 
never  produced  a  more  splendid  creature  than  the  first- 
rate  one,  witness  Shakespeare  and  the  Indian  Mutiny. 
Witness  that  truly  sublime  self-abnegation  of  those  pris 
oners  lately  among  the  bandits  of  Greece,  where  average 
men  gave  an  example  of  quiet  fortitude  for  which  all 
the  stoicism  of  antiquity  can  show  no  match.  If  we 
could  contrive  to  be  not  too  unobtrusively  our  simple 
selves,  we  should  be  the  most  delightful  of  human  be 
ings,  and  the  most  original ;  whereas,  when,  the  plating 
of  Anglicism  rubs  off,  as  it  always  will  in  points  that 
come  to  much  wear,  we  are  liable  to  very  unpleasing 
conjectures  about  the  quality  of  the  metal  underneath. 
Perhaps  one  reason  why  the  average  Briton  spreads  him 
self  here  with  such  an  easy  air  of  superiority  may  be 
owing  to  the  fact  that  he  meets  with  so  many  bad  imi 
tations  as  to  conclude  himself  the  only  real  thing  in  a 
wilderness  of  shams.  He  fancies  himself  moving  through 
an  endless  Bloomsbury,  where  his  mere  apparition  con 
fers  honor  as  an  avatar  of  the  court-end  of  the  universe. 
Not  a  Bull  of  them  all  but  is  persuaded  he  bears  Europa 
upon  his  back.  This  is  the  sort  of  fellow  whose  patron 
age  is  so  divertingly  insufferable.  Thank  Heaven  he  is 
not  the  only  specimen  of  cater-cousins  hip  from  the  dear 
old  Mother  Island  that  is  shown  to  us  !  Among  genuine 
things,  I  know  nothing  more  genuine  than  the  better 
men  whose  limbs  were  made  in  England.  So  manly- 


70    ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS. 

tender,  so  brave,   so  true,  so  warranted  to  wear,  they 
make  us  proud  to  feel  that  blood  is  thicker  than  water. 

But  it  is  not  merely  the  Englishman  ;  every  European 
candidly  admits  in  himself  some  right  of  primogeniture 
in  respect  to  us,  and  pats  this  shaggy  continent  on  the 
back  with  a  lively  sense  of  generous  unbending.  The 
German  who  plays  the  bass-viol  has  a  well-founded  con 
tempt,  which  he  is  not  always  nice  in  concealing,  for  a 
country  so  few  of  whose  children  ever  take  that  noble 
instrument  between  their  knees.  His  cousin,  the  Ph. 
D.  from  Gottingen,  cannot  help  despising  a  people  who 
do  not  grow  loud  and  red  over  Aryans  and  Turanians, 
and  are  indifferent  about  their  descent  from  either.  The 
Frenchman  feels  an  easy  mastery  in  speaking  his  mother 
tongue,  and  attributes  it  to  some  native  superiority  of 
parts  that  lifts  him  high  above  us  barbarians  of  the 
West.  The  Italian  prima  donna  sweeps  a  courtesy  of 
careless  pity  to  the  over-facile  pit  which  unsexes  her 
with  the  bravo  !  innocently  meant  to  show  a  familiarity 
with  foreign  usage.  But  all  without  exception  make  no 
secret  of  regarding  us  as  the  goose  bound  to  deliver 
them  a  golden  egg  in  return  for  their  cackle.  Such 
men  as  Agassiz,  Guyot,  and  Gold  win  Smith  come  with 
gifts  in  their  hands ;  but  since  it  is  commonly  European 
failures  who  bring  hither  their  remarkable  gifts  and 
acquirements,  this  view  of  the  case  is  sometimes  just 
the  least  bit  in  the  world  provoking.  To  think  what  a 
delicious  seclusion  of  contempt  we  enjoyed  till  Califor 
nia  and  our  own  ostentatious  parvenus,  flinging  gold 
away  in  Europe  that  might  have  endowed  libraries  at 
home,  gave  us  the  ill  repute  of  riches  !  What  a  shabby 
downfall  from  the  Arcadia  which  the  French  officers  of 
our  Revolutionary  War  fancied  they  saw  here  through 
Rousseau-tinted  spectacles  !  Something  of  Arcadia  there 
really  was,  something  of  the  Old  Age ;  and  that  divine 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS.    71 

provincialism  were  cheaply  repurchased  could  -we  have 
it  back  again  in  exchange  for  the  tawdry  upholstery 
that  has  taken  its  place. 

For  some  reason  or  other,  the  European  has  rarely 
been  able  to  see  America  except  in  caricature.  Would 
the  first  Review  of  the  world  have  printed  the  niaiseries  . 
of  Mr.  Maurice  Sand  as  a  picture  of  society  in  any  civil 
ized  country  1  Mr.  Sand,  to  be  sure,  has  inherited 
nothing  of  his  famous  mother's  literary  outfit,  except 
the  pseudonyme.  But  since  the  conductors  of  the 
Revue  could  not  have  published  his  story  because  it  was 
clever,  they  must  have  thought  it  valuable  for  its  truth. 
As  true  as  the  last-century  Englishman's  picture  of 
Jean  Crapaud  !  We  do  not  ask  to  be  sprinkled  with 
rosewater,  but  may  perhaps  fairly  protest  against  being 
drenched  with  the  rinsings  of  an  unclean  imagination. 
The  next  .time  the  Revue  allows  such  ill-bred  persons  to 
throw  their  slops  out  of  its  first-floor  windows,  let  it 
honestly  preface  the  discharge  with  a  gare  de  Veau  !  that 
we  may  run  from  under  in  season.  And  Mr.  Duvergier 
d'Hauranne,  who  knows  how  to  be  entertaining !  I 
know  le  Fran^ais  est  plutot  indiscret  que  confiant,  and  the 
pen  slides  too  easily  when  indiscretions  will  fetch  so 
much  a  page  ;  but  should  we  not  have  been  tant-soit-peii 
more  cautious  had  we  been  writing  about  people  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Channel  ]  But  then  it  is  a  fact  in  the 
natural  history  of  the  American  long  familiar  to  Euro 
peans,  that  he  abhors  privacy,  knows  not  the  meaning 
of  reserve,  lives  in  hotels  because  of  their  greater  pub 
licity,  and  is  never  so  pleased  as  when  his  domestic 
affairs  (if  he  may  be  said  to  have  any)  are  paraded  in 
the  newspapers.  Barnum,  it  is  well  known,  represents 
perfectly  the  average  national  sentiment  in  this  respect. 
However  it  be,  we  are  not  treated  like  other  people,  or 
perhaps  I  should  say  like  people  who  are  ever  likely  to 
be  met  with  in  society. 


72  ON   A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS. 

Is  it  in  the  climate  1  Either  I  have  a  false  notion  of 
European  manners,  or  else  the  atmosphere  affects  them 
strangely  when  exported  hither.  Perhaps  they  suffer 
from  the  sea-voyage  like  some  of  the  more  delicate 
wines.  During  our  Civil  War  an  English  gentleman  of 
the  highest  description  was  kind  enough  to  call  upon 
me,  mainly,  as  it  seemed,  to  inform  me  how  entirely 
he  sympathized  with  the  Confederates,  and  how  sure  he 
felt  that  we  could  never  subdue  them,  —  "  they  were 
the  gentlemen  of  the  country,  you  know."  Another,  the 
first  greetings  hardly  over,  asked  me  how  I  accounted 
for  the  universal  meagreness  of  my  countrymen.  To  a 
thinner  man  than  I,  or  from  a  stouter  man  than  he,  the 
question  might  have  been  offensive.  The  Marquis  of 
Hartington  *  wore  a  secession  badge  at  a  public  ball  in 
New  York.  In  a  civilized  country  he  might  have  been 
roughly  handled ;  but  here,  where  the  bienseances  are 
not  so  well  understood,  of  course  nobody  minded  it.  A 
French  traveller  told  me  he  had  been  a  good  deal  in  the 
British  colonies,  and  had  been  astonished  to  see  how 
soon  the  people  became  Americanized.  He  added,  with 
delightful  bonhomie,  and  as  if  he  were  sure  it  would 
charm  me,  that  "  they  even  began  to  talk  through  their 
noses,  just  like  you  ! "  I  was  naturally  ravished  with 
this  testimony  to  the  assimilating  power  of  democracy, 
and  could  only  reply  that  I  hoped  they  would  never 
adopt  our  democratic  patent-method  of  seeming  to  settle 
one's  honest  debts,  for  they  would  find  it  paying  through 
the  nose  in  the  long-run.  I  am  a  man  of  the  New 

*  One  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  neatest  strokes  of  humor  was  his  treatment 
of  this  gentleman  when  a  laudable  curiosity  induced  him  to  be  pre 
sented  to  the  President  of  the  Broken  Bubble.  Mr.  Lincoln  persisted 
in  calling  him  Mr.  Partington.  Surely  the  refinement  of  good-breed 
ing  could  go  no  further.  Giving  the  young  man  his  real  name  (already 
notorious  in  the  newspapers)  would  have  made  his  visit  an  insult. 
Had  Henri  IV.  done  this,  it  would  have  been  famous. 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS.    73 

World,  and  do  not  know  precisely  the  present  fashion  of 
May-Fair,  but  I  have  a  kind  of  feeling  that  if  an  Ameri 
can  (mutato  nomine,  de  te  is  always  frightfully  possible) 
were  to  do  this  kind  of  thing  under  a  European  roof,  it 
would  induce  some  disagreeable  reflections  as  to  the 
ethical  results  of  democracy.  I  read  the  other  day  in 
print  the  remark  of  a  British  tourist  who  had  eaten 
large  quantities  of  our  salt,  such  as  it  is  (I  grant  it  has 
not  the  European  savor),  that  the  Americans  were 
hospitable,  no  doubt,  but  that  it  was  partly  because  they 
longed  for  foreign  visitors  to  relieve  the  tedium  of  their 
dead-level  existence,  and  partly  from  ostentation.  What 
shall  we  do]  Shall  we  close  our  doors?  Not  I,  for  one, 
if  I  should  so  have  forfeited  the  friendship  of  L.  S., 
most  lovable  of  men.  He  somehow  seems  to  find  us 
human,  at  least,  and  so  did  Clough,  whose  poetry  will 
one  of  these  days,  perhaps,  be  found  to  have  been  the 
best  utterance  in  verse  of  this  generation.  And  T.  H. 
the  mere  grasp  of  whose  manly  hand  carries  with  it  the 
pledge  of  frankness  and  friendship,  of  an  abiding  sim 
plicity  of  nature  as  affecting  as  it  is  rare  ! 

The  fine  old  Tory  aversion  of  former  times  was  not 
hard  to  bear.  There  was  something  even  refreshing  in 
it,  as  in  a  northeaster  to  a  hardy  temperament.  When 
a  British  parson,  travelling  in  Newfoundland  while  the 
slash  of  our  separation  was  still  raw,  after  prophesying  a 
glorious  futiire  for  an  island  that  continued  to  dry  its 
fish  under  the  segis  of  Saint  George,  glances  disdainfully 
over  his  spectacles  in  parting  at  the  U.  S.  A.,  and  fore 
bodes  for  them  a  "  speedy  relapse  into  barbarism,"  now 
that  they  have  madly  cut  themselves  off  from  the 
humanizing  .influences  of  Britain,  I  smile  with  barbarian 
self-conceit.  But  this  kind  of  thing  became  by  degrees 
an  unpleasant  anachronism.  For  meanwhile  the  young 
giant  was  growing,  was  beginning  indeed  to  feel  tight  in 
4 


74   ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS. 

his  clothes,  was  obliged  to  let  in  a  gore  here  and  there 
in  Texas,  in  California,  in  New  Mexico,  in  Alaska,  and 
had  the  scissors  and  needle  and  thread  ready  for  Can 
ada  when  the  time  came.  His  shadow  loomed  like  a 
Brocken-spectre  over  against  Europe,  —  the  shadow  of 
what  they  were  coming  to,  that  was  the  unpleasant  part 
of  it.  Even  in  such  misty  image  as  they  had  of  him,  it 
was  painfully  evident  that  his  clothes  were  not  of  any 
cut  hitherto  fashionable,  nor  conceivable  by  a  Bond 
Street  tailor,  —  and  this  in  an  age,  too,  when  everything 
depends  upon  clothes,  when,  if  we  do  not*  keep  up  ap 
pearances,  the  seeming-solid  frame  of  this  universe,  nay, 
your  very  God,  would  slump  into  himself,  like  a  mockery 
king  of  snow,  being  nothing,  after  all,  but  a  prevailing 
mode.  From  this  moment  the  young  giant  assumed  the 
respectable  aspect  of  a  phenomenon,  to  be  got  rid  of  if 
possible,  but  at  any  rate  as  legitimate  a  subject  of  human 
study  as  the  glacial  period  or  the  silurian  what-d'ye-call- 
ems.  If  the  man  of  the  primeval  drift-heaps  is  so  ab 
sorbingly  interesting,  why  not  the  man  of  the  drift  that 
is  just  beginning,  of  the  drift  into  whose  irresistible  cur 
rent  we  arc  just  being  sucked  whether  we  will  or  no  ?  If 
I  were  in  their  place,  I  confess  I  should  not  be  fright 
ened.  Man  has  survived  so  much,  and  contrived  to  be 
comfortable  on  this  planet  after  surviving  so  much  !  I 
am  something  of  a  protestant  in  matters  of  government 
also,  and  am  willing  to  get  rid  of  vestments  and  cere 
monies  and  to  come  down  to  bare  benches,  if  only  faith 
in  God  take  the  place  of  a  general  agreement  to  profess 
confidence  in  ritual  and  'sham.  Every  mortal  man  of  us 
holds  stock  in  the  only  public  debt  that  is  absolutely 
sure  of  payment,  and  that  is  the  debt  of  the  Maker  of 
this  Universe  to  the  Universe  he  has  made.  I  have  no 
notion  of  selling  out  my  stock  in  a  panic. 

It  was  something  to  have  advanced  even  to  the  dignity 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOEEIGNERS.   75 

of  a  phenomenon,  and  yet  I  do  not  know  that  the  rela 
tion  of  the  individual  American  to  the  individual  Euro 
pean  was  bettered  by  it ;  and  that,  after  all,  must  adjust 
itself  comfortably  before  there  can  be  a  right  under 
standing  between  the  two.  We  had  been  a  desert,  we 
became  a  museum.  People  came  hither  for  scientific 
and  not  social  ends.  The  very  cockney  could  not  com 
plete  his  education  without  taking  a  vacant  stare  at  us 
in  passing.  But  the  sociologists  (I  think  they  call  them 
selves  so)  were  the  hardest  to  bear.  There  was  no  es 
cape.  I  have  even  known  a  professor  of  this  fearful 
science  to  come  disguised  in  petticoats.  We  were  cross- 
examined  as  a  chemist  cross-examines  a  new  substance. 
Human  1  yes,  all  the  elements  are  present,  though  ab 
normally  combined.  Civilized  1  Hm !  that  needs  a 
stricter  assay.  No  entomologist  could  take  a  more 
friendly. interest  in  a  strange  bug.  After  a  few  such  ex 
periences,  I,  for  one,  have  felt  as  if  I  were  merely  one  of 
those  horrid  things  preserved  in  spirits  (and  very  bad 
spirits,  too)  in  a  cabinet.  I  was  not  the  fellow-being  of 
these  explorers  :  I  was  a  curiosity ;  I  was  a  specimen. 
Hath  not  an  American  organs,  dimensions,  senses,  affec 
tions,  passions  even  as  a  European  hath  1  If  you  prick 
us,  do  we  not  bleed  1  If  you  tickle  us,  do  we  not  laugh  ] 
I  wjll  not  keep  on  with  Shylock  to  his  next  question  but 
one. 

Till  after  our  Civil  War  it  never  seemed  to  enter  the 
head  of  any  foreigner,  especially  of  any  Englishman,  that 
an  American  had  what  could  be  called  a  country,  except 
as  a  place  to  eat,  sleep,  and  trade  in.  Then  it  seemed  to 
strike  them  suddenly.  "By  Jove,  you  know,  fellahs 
don't  fight  like  that  for  a  shop-till !  "  No,  I  rather  think 
not.  To  Americans  America  is  something  more  than  a 
promise  and  an  expectation.  It  has  a  past  and  tradi 
tions  of  its  own.  A  descent  from  men  who  sacrificed 


76    ON   A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION   IN   FOREIGNERS. 

everything  and  came  hither,  not  to  better  their  fortunes, 
but  to  plant  their  idea  in  virgin  soil,  should  be  a  good 
pedigree.  There  was  never  colony  save  this  that  went 
forth,  not  to  seek  gold,  but  God.  Is  it  not  as  well  to 
have  sprung  from  such  as  these  as  from  some  burly 
beggar  who  came  over  with  Wilhelmus  Conquestor,  un 
less,  indeed,  a  line  grow  better  as  it  runs  farther  away 
from  stalwart  ancestors  1  And  for  history,  it  is  dry 
enough,  no  doubt,  in  the  books,  but,  for  all  that,  is  of  a 
kind  that  tells  in  the  blood.  I  have  admitted  that  Car- 
lyle's  sneer  had  a  show  of  truth  in  it.  But  what  does 
he  himself,  like  a  true  Scot,  admire  in  the  Hohenzol- 
lerns1?  First  of  all,  that  they  were  canny,  a  thrifty, 
forehanded  race.  Next,  that  they  made  a  good  fight 
from  generation  to  generation  with  the  chaos  around 
them.  That  is  precisely  the  battle  which  the  English 
race  on  this  continent  has  been  carrying  doughtily  on  for 
two  centuries  and  a  half.  Doughtily  and  silently,  for 
you  cannot  hear  in  Europe  "  that  crash,  the  death-song 
of  the  perfect  tree,"  that  has  been  going  on  here  from 
sturdy  father  to  sturdy  son,  and  making  this  continent 
habitable  for  the  weaker  Old  World  breed  that  has 
swarmed  to  it  during  the  last  half-century.  If  ever  men 
did  a  good  stroke  of  work  on  this  planet,  it  was  the  fore 
fathers  of  those  whom  you  are  wondering  whether  it 
would  not  be  prudent  to  acknowledge  as  far-off  cousins. 
Alas,  man  of  genius,  to  whom  we  owe  so  much,  could 
you  see  nothing  more  than  the  burning  of  a  foul  chim 
ney  in  that  clash  of  Michael  and  Satan  which  flamed  up 
under  your  very  eyes  ? 

Before  our  war  we  were  to  Europe  but  a  huge  mob  of 
adventurers  and  shop-keepers.  Leigh  Hunt  expressed  it 
well  enough  when  he  said  that  he  could  never  think  of 
America  without  seeing  a  gigantic  counter  stretched  all 
along  the  seaboard.  Feudalism  had  by  degrees  made 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS.    77 

commerce,  the  great  civilizer,  contemptible.  But  a 
tradesman  with  sword  on  thigh  and  very  prompt  of 
stroke  was  not  only  redoubtable,  he  had  become  respect 
able  also.  Few  people,  I  suspect,  alluded  twice  to  a 
needle  in  Sir  John  Ha\vkwood's  presence,  after  that 
doughty  fighter  had  exchanged  it  for  a  more  dangerous 
tool  of  the  same  metal.  Democracy  had  been  hitherto 
only  a  ludicrous  effort  to  reverse  the  laws  of  nature  by 
thrusting  Cleon  into  the  place  of  Pericles.  But  a  democ 
racy  that  could  fight  for  an  abstraction,  whose  members 
held  life  and  goods  cheap  compared  with  that  larger  life 
which  we  call  country,  was  not  merely  imheard-of,  but 
portentous.  It  was  the  nightmare  of  the  Old  World 
taking  upon  itself  flesh  and  blood,  turning  out  to  be 
substance  and  not  dream.  Since  the  Norman  crusader 
clanged  down  upon  the  throne  of  the  porpliyro-geniti, 
carefully-draped  appearances  had  never  received  such  a 
shock,  had  never  been  so  rudely  called  on  to  produce 
their  titles  to  the  empire  of  the  world.  Authority  has 
had  its  periods  not  unlike  those  of  geology,  and  at  last 
comes  Man  claiming  kingship  in  right  of  his  mere  man 
hood.  The  world  of  the  Saurians  might  be  in  some 
respects  more  picturesque,  but  the  march  of  events  is 
inexorable,  and  it  is  bygone. 

The  young  giant  had  certainly  got  out  of  long-clothes. 
He  had  become  the  enfant  terrible  of  the  human  house 
hold.  It  was  not  and  will  not  be  easy  for  the  world 
(especially  for  our  British  cousins)  to  look  upon  us  as 
grown  up.  The  youngest  of  nations,  its  people  must  also 
be  young  and  to  be  treated  accordingly,  was  the  syl 
logism,  — as  if  libraries  did  not  make  all  nations  equally 
old  in  all  those  respects,  at  least,  where  age  is  an  ad 
vantage  and  not  a  defect.  Youth,  no  doubt,  has  its  good 
qualities,  as  people  feel  who  are  losing  it,  but  boyishness 
m  another  thing.  We  had  been  somewhat  boyish  as  a 


78    ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS. 

nation,  a  little  loud,  a  little  pushing,  a  little  braggart. 
But  might  it  not  partly  have  been  because  we  felt  that 
we  had  certain  claims  to  respect  that  were  not  admitted] 
The  war  which  established  our  position  as  a  vigorous 
nationality  has  also  sobered  us.  A  nation,  like  a  man, 
cannot  look  death  in  the  eye  for  four  years,  without  some 
strange  reflections,  without  arriving  at  some  clearer  con 
sciousness  of  the  stuff  it  is  made  of,  without  some  great 
moral  change.  Such  a  change,  or  the  beginning  of  it, 
no  observant  person  can  fail  to  see  here.  Our  thought 
and  our  politics,  our  bearing  as  a  people,  are  assuming  a 
manlier  tone.  We  have  been  compelled  to  see  what  was 
weak  in  democracy  as  well  as  what  was  strong.  We 
have  begun  obscurely  to  recognize  that  things  do  not  go 
of  themselves,  and  that  popular  government  ig  not  in 
itself  a  panacea,  is  no  better  than  any  other  form  except 
as  the  virtue  and  wisdom  of  the  people  make  it  so,  and 
that  when  men  undertake  to  do  their  own  kingship,  they 
enter  upon  the  dangers  and  responsibilities  as  well  as 
the  privileges  of  the  function.  Above  all,  it  looks  as  if 
we  were  011  the  way  to  be  persuaded  that  no  government 
can  be  carried  on  by  declamation.  It  is  noticeable  also 
that  facility  of  communication  has  made  the  best  Eng 
lish  and  French  thought  far  more  directly  operative 
here  than  ever  before.  Without  being  Europeanized, 
our  discussion  of  important  questions  in  statesmanship, 
political  economy,  in  aesthetics,  is  taking  a  broader  scope 
and  a  higher  tone.  It  had  certainly  been  provincial, 
one  might  almost  say  local,  to  a  very  unpleasant  extent. 
Perhaps  our  experience  in  soldiership  has  taught  us  to 
value  training  more  than  we  have  been  popularly  wont. 
We  may  possibly  come  to  the  conclusion,  one  of  these 
days,  that  self-made  men  may  not  be  always  equally 
skilful  in  the  manufacture  of  wisdom,  may  not  be 
divinely  commissioned  to  fabricate  the  higher  qualities 
of  opinion  on  all  possible  topics  of  human  interest. 


ON  A   CERTAIN  CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS.    79 

So  long  as  we  continue  to  be  the  most  common- 
schooled  and  the  least  cultivated  people  in  the  world,  I 
suppose  we  must  consent  to  endure  this  condescending 
manner  of  foreigners  toward  us.  The  more  friendly 
they  mean  to  be  the  more  ludicrously  prominent  it  be 
comes.  They  can  never  appreciate  the  immense  amount 
of  silent  work  that  has  been  done  here,  making  this 
continent  slowly  fit  for  the  abode  of  man,  and  which 
will  demonstrate  itself,  let  us  hope,  in  the  character  of 
the  people.  Outsiders  can  only  be  expected  to  judge  a 
nation  by  the  amount  it  has  contributed  to  the  civiliza 
tion  of  the  world  ;  the  amount,  that  is,  that  can  be  seen 
and  handled.  A  great  place  in  history  can  only  be 
achieved  by  competitive  examinations,  nay,  by  a  long 
course  of  them.  How  much  new  thought  have  we  con 
tributed  to  the  common  stock  1  Till  that  question  can 
be  triumphantly-  answered,  or  needs  no  answer,  we  must 
continue  to  be  simply  interesting  as  an  experiment,  to 
be  studied  as  a  problem,  and  not  respected  as  an  at 
tained  result  or  an  accomplished  solution.  Perhaps,  as 
I  have  hinted,  their  patronizing  manner  toward  us  is  the 
fair  result  of  their  failing  to  see  here  anything  more  than 
a  poor  imitation,  a  plaster-cast  of  Europe.  And  are 
they  not  partly  right  1  If  the  tone  of  the  uncultivated 
American  has  too  often  the  arrogance  of  the  barbarian, 
is  not  that  of  the  cultivated  as  often  vulgarly  apologetic  ? 
In  the  America  they  meet  with  is  there  the  simplicity, 
the  manliness,  the  absence  of  sham,  the  sincere  human 
nature,  the  sensitiveness  to  duty  and  implied  obligation, 
that  in  any  way  distinguishes  us  from  what  our  orators 
call  "the  effete  civilization  of  the  Old  World"]  Is 
there  a  politician  among  us  daring  enough  (except  a 
Dana  here  and  there)  to  risk  his  future  on  the  chance 
of  our  keeping  our  woi'd  with  the  exactness  of  super 
stitious  communities  like  England  1  Is  it  certain  that 


80    ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS. 

\ve  shall  be  ashamed  of  a  bankruptcy  of  honor,  if  we 
can  only  keep  the  letter  of  our  bond  ?  I  hope  we  shall 
be  able  to  answer  all  these  questions  with  a  frank  yes. 
At  any  rate,  we  would  advise  our  visitors  that  we  are 
not  merely  curious  creatures,  but  belong  to  the  family 
of  man,  and  that,  as  individuals,  we  are  not  to  be  al 
ways  subjected  to  the  competitive  examination  above 
mentioned,  even  if  we  acknowledged  their  competence 
as  an  examining  board.  Above  all,  we  beg  them  to  re 
member  that  America  is  not  to  us,  as  to  them,  a  mere 
object  of  external  interest  to  be  discussed  and  analyzed, 
but  in  us,  part  of  our  very  marrow.  Let  them  not  sup 
pose  that  we  conceive  of  ourselves  as  exiles  from  the 
graces  and  amenities  of  an  older  date  than  we,  though 
very  much  at  home  in  a  state  of  things  not  yet  all  it 
might  be  or  should  be,  but  which  we  mean  to  make  so, 
and  which  we  find  both  wholesome  and  pleasant  for  men 
(though  perhaps  not  for  dilettanti)  to  live  in.  "  The  full 
tide  of  human  existence  "  may  be  felt  here  as  keenly  as 
Johnson  felt  it  at  Charing  Cross,  and  in  a  larger  sense. 
I  know  one  person  who  is  singular  enough  to  think 
Cambridge  the  very  best  spot  on  the  habitable  globe. 
"  Doubtless  God  could  have  made  a  better,  but  doubtless 
he  never  did." 

It  will  take  England  a  great  while  to  get  over  her  airs 
of  patronage  toward  us,  or  even  passably  to  conceal 
them.  She  cannot  help  confounding  the  people  with  the 
country,  and  regarding  us  as  lusty  juveniles.  She  has  a 
conviction  that  whatever  good  there  is  in  us  is  wholly 
English,  when  the  truth  is  that  we  are  worth  nothing  ex 
cept  so  far  as  we  have  disinfected  ourselves  of  Anglicism. 
She  is  especially  condescending  just  now,  and  lavishes 
sugar-plums  on  us  as  if  we  had  not  outgrown  them.  I 
am  no  believer  in  sudden  conversions,  especially  in  sud 
den  conversions  to  a  favorable  opinion  of  people  who 


ON  A   CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN  FOREIGNERS.    81 

have  just  proved  you  to  be  mistaken  in  judgment  and 
therefore  unwise  in  policy.  I  never  blamed  her  for  not 
wishing  well  to  democracy,  —  how  should  she?  —  but 
Alabamas  are  not  wishes.  Let  her  not  be  too  hasty  in 
believing  Mr.  Reverdy  Johnson's  pleasant  words.  Though 
there  is  no  thoughtful  man  in  America  who  would  not 
consider  a  war  with  England  the  greatest  of  calamities, 
yet  the  feeling  towards  her  here  is  very  far  from  cordial, 
whatever  our  Minister  may  say  in  the  effusion  that 
comes  after  ample  dining.  Mr.  Adams,  with  his  famous 
"  My  Lord,  this  means  war,"  perfectly  represented  his 
country.  Justly  or  not,  we  have  a  feeling  that  we  have 
been  wronged,  not  merely  insulted.  The  only  sure  way 
of  bringing  about  a  healthy  relation  between  the  two 
countries  is  for  Englishmen  to  clear  their  minds  of  the 
notion  that  we  are  always  to  be  treated  as  a  kind  of 
inferior  and  deported  Englishman  whose  nature  they 
perfectly  understand,  and  whose  back  they  accordingly 
stroke  the  Avrong  way  of  the  fur  with  amazing  persever 
ance.  Let  them  learn  to  treat  us  naturally  on  our 
merits  as  human  beings,  as  they  would  a  German  or  a 
Frenchman,  and  not  as  if  we  were  a  kind  of  counterfeit 
Briton  whose  crime  appeared  in  every  shade  of  difference, 
and  before  long  there  would  come  that  right  feeling 
which  we  naturally  call  a  good  understanding.  The 
common  blood,  and  still  more  the  common  language,  are 
fatal  instruments  of  misapprehension.  Let  them  give 
up  trying  to  understand  us,  still  more  thinking  that 
they  do,  and  acting  in  various  absurd  ways  as  the 
necessary  consequence,  for  they  will  never  arrive  at  that 
devoutly-to-be-wished  consummation,  till  they  learn  to 
look  at  us  as  we  are  and  not  as  they  suppose  us  to  be. 
Dear  old  long-estranged  mother-in-law,  it  is  a  great  many 
years  since  we  parted.  Since  1660,  when  you  married 
again,  you  have  been  a  step-mother  to  us.  Put  on  your 


82   ON  A  CERTAIN   CONDESCENSION  IN   FOREIGNERS. 

spectacles,  dear  madam.  Yes,  we  have  grown,  and 
changed  likewise.  You  would  not  let  us  darken  your 
doors,  if  you  could  help  it.  We  know  that  perfectly 
well.  But  pray,  when  we  look  to  be  treated  as  men, 
don't  shake  that  rattle  in  our  faces,  nor  talk  baby  to  us 
any  longer. 

"  Do,  child,  go  to  it  grandam,  child; 

Give  grandam  kingdom,  and  it  grandam  will 

Give  it  a  plum,  a  cherry,  and  a  fig!  " 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.* 


IT  is  the  misfortune  of  American  biography  that  it 
must  needs  be  more  or  less  provincial,  and  that, 
contrary  to  what  might  have  been  predicted,  this  qual 
ity  in  it  predominates  in  proportion  as  the  country 
grows  larger.  Wanting  any  great  and  acknowledged 
centre  of  national  life  and  thought,  our  expansion  has 
hitherto  been  rather  aggregation  than  growth ;  reputa 
tions  must  be  hammered  out  thin  to  cover  so  wide  a 
surface,  and  the  substance  of  most  hardly  holds  out  to 
the  boundaries  of  a  single  State.  Our  very  history 
wants  unity,  and  down  to  the  Revolution  the  attention 
is  Avearied  and  confused  by  having  to  divide  itself  among 
thirteen  parallel  threads,  instead  of  being  concentred 
on  a  single  clew.  A  sense  of  remoteness  and  seclusion 
comes  over  us  as  we  read,  and  we  cannot  help  asking 
ourselves,  "  Were  not  these  things  done  in  a  corner  ] " 
Notoriety  may  be  achieved  in  a  narrow  sphere,  but 
fame  demands  for  its  evidence  a  more  distant  and  pro 
longed  reverberation.  To  the  world  at  large  we  were 
but  a  short  column  of  figures  in  the  corner  of  a  blue- 
book,  New  England  exporting  so  much  salt-fish,  timber, 
and  Medford  rum,  Virginia  so  many  hogsheads  of  tobac 
co,  and  buying  with  the  proceeds  a  certain  amount  of 
English  manufactures.  The  story  of  our  early  coloniza 
tion  had  a  certain  moral  interest,  to  be  sure,  but  was 
altogether  inferior  in  picturesque  fascination  to  that  of 

*  The  Life  of  Josiah  Quincy  by  his  son. 


84        A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

Mexico  or  Peru.  The  lives  of  our  worthies,  like  that  of 
our  nation,  are  bare  of  those  foregone  and  far-reaching 
associations  with  names,  the  divining-rods  of  fancy,  which 
the  soldiers  and  civilians  of  the  Old  World  get  for 
nothing  by  the  mere  accident  of  birth.  Their  historians 
and  biographers  have  succeeded  to  the  good-will,  as 
well  as  to  the  long-established  stand,  of  the  shop  of 
glory.  Time  is,  after  all,  the  greatest  of  poets,  and  the 
sons  of  Memory  stand  a  better  chance  of  being  the  heirs 
of  Fame.  The  philosophic  poet  may  find  a  proud  solace 
in  saying, 

"  Avia  Pieridum  peragro  loca  nullius  ante 
Tritasolo  "; 

but  all  the  while  he  has  the  splendid  centuries  of  Greece 
and  Rome  behind  him,  and  can  begin  his  poem  with  in 
voking  a  goddess  from  whom  legend  derived  the  planter 
of  his  race.  His  eyes  looked  out  on  a  landscape  satu 
rated  with  glorious  recollections  ;  he  had  seen  Ciesar, 
and  heard  Cicero.  But  who  shall  conjxire  with  Saugus 
or  Cato  Four  Corners,  —  with  Israel  Putnam  or  Return 
Jonathan  Meigs  ?  We  have  been  ti-ansplanted,  and  for 
us  the  long  hierarchical  succession  of  history  is  broken. 
The  Past  has  not  laid  its  venerable  hands  upon  us  in 
consecration,  conveying  to  us  that  mysterious  influence 
•whose  force  is  in  its  continuity.  We  are  to  Europe  as 
the  Church  of  England  to  her  of  Rome.  The  latter  old 
lady  may  be  the  Scarlet  Woman,  or  the  Beast  with  ten 
horns,  if  you  will,  but  hers  are  all  the  heirlooms,  hers 
that  vast  spiritual  estate  of  tradition,  nowhere  yet  every 
where,  whose  revenues  are  none  the  less  fruitful  for 
being  levied  on  the  imagination.  We  may  claim  that 
England's  history  is  also  ours,  but  it  is  a  dejure,  and  not 
a  de facto  property  that  we  have  in  it,  —  something  that 
may  be  proved  indeed,  yet  is  a  merely  intellectual  satis 
faction,  and  does  not  savor  of  the  realty.  Have  we  not 


,   A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.        85 

seen  the  mockery  crown  and  sceptre  of  the  exiled  Stuarts 
in  St.  Peter's?  the  medal  struck  so  lately  as  1784  with 
its  legend,  HEX  IX  MAG  BRIT  ET  HIB  REX,  whose  con 
tractions  but  faintly  typify  the  scantness  of  the  fact  ] 

As  the  novelist  complains  that  jur  society  wants  that 
sharp  contrast  of  character  and  costume  which  comes  of 
caste,  so  in  the  narrative  of  our  historians  we  miss  what 
may  be  called  background  and  perspective,  as  if  the 
events  and  the  actors  in  them  failed  of  that  cumulative 
interest  which  only  a  long  historical  entail  can  give.  Rel 
atively,  the  crusade  of  Sir  William  Pepperell  was  of  more 
consequence  than  that  of  St.  Louis,  and  yet  forgive  us, 
injured  shade  of  the  second  American  baronet,  if  we  find 
the  narrative  of  Joinville  more  interesting  than  your  de 
spatches  to  Governor  Shirley.  Relatively,  the  insurrec 
tion  of  that  Daniel  whose  Irish  patronymic  Shea  was 
euphonized  into  Shays,  as  a  set-off  for  the  debasing  of 
French  chaise  into  shay,  was  more  dangerous  than  that 
of  Charles  Edward  ;  but  for  some  reason  or  other  (as  vice 
sometimes  has  the  advantage  of  virtue)  the  latter  is  more 
enticing  to  the  imagination,  and  the  least  authentic  relic 
of  it  in  song  or  story  has  a  relish  denied  to  the  painful 
industry  of  Minot.  Our  events  seem  to  fall  shoi't  of  that 
colossal  proportion  which  befits  the  monumental  style. 
Look  grave  as  we  will,  there  is  something  ludicrous  in 
Counsellor  Keane's  pig  being  the  pivot  of  a  revolution. 
We  are  of  yesterday,  and  it  is  to  no  purpose  that  our 
political  augurs  divine  from  the  flight  of  our  eagles  that 
to-morrow  shall  be  ours,  and  flatter  us  with  an  all-hail 
hereafter.  Things  do  really  gain  in  greatness  by  being 
acted  on  a  great  and  cosmopolitan  stage,  because  there 
is  inspiration  in  the  thronged  audience,  and  the  nearer 
match  that  puts  men  on  their  mettle.  Webster  was 
more  largely  endowed  by  nature  than  Fox,  and  Fisher 
Ames  not  much  below  Burke  as  a  talker ;  but  what  a 


86        A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

difference  in  the  intellectual  training,  in  the  literary  cul 
ture  and  associations,  in  the  whole  social  outfit,  of  the 
men  who  were  their  antagonists  and  companions !  It 
should  seem  that,  if  it  be  collision  with  other  minds  and 
with  events  that  strikes  or  draws  the  fire  from  a  man,  then 
the  quality  of  those  might  have  something  to  do  with 
the  quality  of  the  fire,  —  whether  it  shall  be  culinary  or 
electric.  We  have  never  known  the  varied  stimulus,  the 
inexorable  criticism,  the  many-sided  opportunity  of  a 
great  metropolis,  the  inspiring  reinforcement  of  an  un 
divided  national  consciousness.  In  everything  but  trade 
we  have  missed  the  invigoration  of  foreign  rivalry.  AVe 
may  prove  that  we  are  this  and  that  and  the  other,  — 
our  Fourth-of-July  orators  have  proved  it  time  and  again, 
—  the  census  has  proved  it ;  but  the  Muses  are  women, 
and  have  no  great  fancy  for  statistics,  though  easily 
silenced  by  them.  We  are  great,  we  are  rich,  we  are  all 
kinds  of  good  things  ;  but  did  it  never  occur  to  you  that 
somehow  we  are  not  interesting,  except  as  a  phenomenon  1 
It  may  safely  be  affirmed  that  for  one  cultivated  man  in 
this  country  who  studies  American,  there  are  fifty  who 
study  European  history,  ancient  or  modern. 

Till  within  a  year  or  two  we  have  been  as  distant  and 
obscure  to  the  eyes  of  Europe  as  Ecuador  to  our  own. 
Every  day  brings  us  nearer,  enables  us  to  see  the  Old 
World  more  clearly,  and  by  inevitable  comparison  to 
judge  ourselves  with  some  closer  approach  to  our  real 
value.  This  has  its  advantage  so  long  as  our  culture  is, 
as  for  a  long  time  it  must  be,  European ;  for  we  shall  be 
little  better  than  apes  and  parrots  till  we  are  forced  to 
measure  our  muscle  with  the  trained  and  practised  cham 
pions  of  that  elder  civilization.  We  have  at  length  es 
tablished  our  claim  to  the  noblesse  of  the  sword,  the  first 
step  still  of  every  nation  that  would  make  its  entry  into 
the  best  society  of  history.  To  maintain  ourselves  there, 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.         87 

we  must  achieve  an  equality  in  the  more  exclusive  circle 
of  culture,  and  to  that  end  must  submit  ourselves  to  the 
European  standard  of  intellectual  weights  and  measures. 
That  we  have  made  the  hitherto  biggest  gun  might  ex 
cite  apprehension  (were  there  a  dearth  of  iron),  but  can 
never  exact  respect.  That  our  pianos  and  patent  reapers 
have  won  medals  does  but  confirm  us  in  our  mechanic 
and  material  measure  of  merit.  We  must  contribute 
something  more  than  mere  contrivances  for  the  saving 
of  labor,  which  we  have  been  only  too  ready  to  misapply 
in  the  domain  of  thought  and  the  higher  kinds  of  inven 
tion.  In  those  Olympic  games  where  nations  contend  for 
truly  immortal  wreaths,  it  may  well  be  questioned  whether 
a  mowing-machine  would '  stand  much  chance  in  the 
chariot-races,  —  whether  a  piano,  though  made  by  a  chev 
alier,  could  compete  successfully  for  the  prize  of  music. 

We  shall  have  to  be  content  for  a  good  while  yet  with 
our  provincialism,  and  must  strive  to  make  the  best  of  it. 
In  it  lies  the  germ  of  nationality,  and  that  is,  after  all, 
the  prime  condition  of  all  thorough-bred  greatness  of 
character.  To  this  choicest  fruit  of  a  healthy  life,  well 
rooted  in  native  soil,  and  drawing  prosperous  juices 
thence,  nationality  gives  the  keenest  flavor.  Mr.  Lincoln 
"was  an  original  man,  and  in  so  far  a  great  man ;  yet  it 
was  the  Americanism  of  his  every  thought,  word,  and  act 
which  not  only  made  his  influence  equally  at  home  in 
East  and  West,  but  drew  the  eyes  of  the  outside  world, 
and  was  the  pedestal  that  lifted  him  where  he  could  be 
seen  by  them.  Lincoln  showed  that  native  force  may 
transcend  local  boundaries,  but  the  growth  of  such 
nationality  is  hindered  and  hampered  by  our  division 
into  so  many  half-independent  communities,  each  with  its 
objects  of  county  ambition,  and  its  public  men  great  to 
the  borders  of  their  district.  In  this  way  our  standard 
of  greatness  is  insensibly  debased.  To  receive  any  na- 


88        A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

tional  appointment,  a  man  must  have  gone  through  pre 
cisely  the  worst  training  for  it ;  he  must  have  so  far 
narrowed  and  belittled  himself  with  State  politics  as  to 
be  acceptable  at  home.  In  this  way  a  man  may  become 
chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs,  because 
he  knows  how  to  pack  a  caucus  in  Catawampus  County, 
or  be  sent  ambassador  to  Barataria,  because  he  has  drunk 
bad  whiskey  with  every  voter  in  Wildcat  City.  Should 
we  ever  attain  to  a  conscious  nationality,  it  will  have  the 
advantage  of  lessening  the  number  of  our  great  men,  and 
widening  our  appreciation  to  the  larger  scale  of  the  two 
or  three  that  are  left,  —  if  there  should  be  so  many. 
Meanwhile  we  offer  a  premium  to  the  production  of  great 
men  in  a  small  way,  by  inviting  each  State  to  set  up  the 
statues  of  two  of  its  immortals  in  the  Capitol.  What  a 
niggardly  percentage  !  Already  we  are  embarrassed,  not 
to  find  the  two,  but  to  choose  among  the  crowd  of  candi 
dates.  Well,  seventy-odd  heroes  in  about  as  many  years 
is  pretty  well  for  a  young  nation.  We  do  not  envy  most 
of  them  their  eternal  martyrdom  in  marble,  their  pillory 
of  indiscrimination.  We  fancy  even  native  tourists  paus 
ing  before  the  greater  part  of  the  effigies,  and,  after 
reading  the  names,  asking  desperately,  "Who  was  he?" 
Nay,  if  they  should  say,  "  Who  the  devil  was  he  ? "  it 
were  a  pardonable  invocation,  for  none  so  fit  as  the 
Prince  of  Darkness  to  act  as  cicerone  among  such  pal 
pable  obscurities.  We  recall  the  court-yard  of  the  Uffizj 
at  Florence.  That  also  is  not  free  of  parish  celebrities'; 
but  Dante,  Galileo,  Michael  Angelo,  Macchiavelli,  —  shall 
the  inventor  of  the  sewing-machine,  even  with  the  button 
holing  improvement,  let  us  say,  match  with  these,  or 
with  far  lesser  than  these  ?  Perhaps  he  was  more  prac 
tically  useful  than  any  one  of  these,  or  all  of  them  to 
gether,  but  the  soul  is  sensible  of  a  sad  difference  some 
where.  These  also  were  citizens  of  a  provincial  capital ; 


A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER.  89 

so  were  the  greater  part  of  Plutarch's  heroes.  Did  they 
have  a  better  chance  than  we  moderns,  —  than  we 
Americans  ]  At  any  rate  they  have  the  start  of  us,  and 
we  must  confess  that 

"  By  bed  and  table  they  lord  it  o'er  us, 
Our  elder  brothers,  but  one  in  blood." 

Yes,  one  in  blood  ;  that  is  the  hardest  part  of  it.  Is 
our  provincialism  then  in  some  great  measure  due  to 
our  absorption  in  the  practical,  as  we  politely  call  it, 
meaning  the  material,  —  to  our  habit  of  estimating 
greatness  by  the  square  mile  and  the  hundred  weight  ] 
Even  during  our  war,  in  the  midst  of  that  almost  unri 
valled  stress  of  soul,  were  not  our  speakers  and  newspa 
pers  so  enslaved  to  the  vulgar  habit  as  to  boast  ten 
times  of  the  thousands  of  square  miles  it  covered  with 
armed  men,  for  once  that  they  alluded  to  the  motive 
that  gave  it  all  its  meaning  and  its  splendor  1  Perhaps 
it  was  as  well  that  they  did  not  exploit  that  passion  of 
pati'iotism  as  an  advertisement  in  the  style  of  Barnum 
or  Perham.  "  I  scale  one  hundred  and  eighty  pounds, 
but  when  I  'm  mad  I  weigh  two  ton,"  said  the  Ken- 
tuckian,  with  a  true  notion  of  moral  avoirdupois.  That 
ideal  kind  of  weight  is  wonderfully  increased  by  a  na 
tional  feeling,  whereby  one  man  is  conscious  that  thirty 
millions  of  men  go  into  the  balance  with  him.  The 
Roman  in  ancient,  and  the  Englishman  in  modern  times, 
have  been  most  conscious  of  this  representative  solidity, 
and  wherever  one  of  them  went  there  stood  Rome  or 
England  in  his  shoes.  We  have  made  some  advance  in 
the  right  direction.  Our  civil  war,  by  the  breadth  of  its 
proportions  and  the  implacability  of  its  demands,  forced 
us  to  admit  a  truer  valuation,  and  gave  us,  in  our  own 
despite,  great  soldiers  and  sailors,  allowed  for  such  by  all 
the  world.  The  harder  problems  it  has  left  behind  may 
in  time  compel  us  to  have  great  statesmen,  with  views 


90        A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

capable  of  reaching  beyond  the  next  election.  The 
criticism  of  Europe  alone  can  rescue  us  from  the  provin 
cialism  of  an  over  or  false  estimate  of  ourselves.  Let  us 
be  thankful,  and  not  angry,  that  we  must  accept  it  as 
our  touchstone.  Our  stamp  has  so  often  been  impressed 
upon  base  metal,  that  we  cannot  expect  it  to  be  taken 
on  trust,  but  we  may  be  sure  that  true  gold  will  be 
equally  persuasive  the  world  over.  Real  manhood  and 
honest  achievement  are  nowhere  provincial,  but  enter 
the  select  society  of  all  time  on  an  even  footing. 

Spanish  America  might  be  a  good  glass  for  us  to  look 
into.  Those  Catharine-wheel  republics,  always  in  revolu 
tion  while  the  powder  lasts,  and  sure  to  burn  the  fingers 
of  whoever  attempts  intervention,  have  also  their  great 
men,  as  placidly  ignored  by  us  as  our  own  by  jealous 
Europe.  The  following  passage  from  the  life  of  Don 
Simon  Bolivar  might  allay  many  motus  animorum,  if 
rightly  pondered.  Bolivar,  then  a  youth,  was  travelling  in 
Italy,  and  his  biographer  tells  us  that  "  near  Castiglione 
he  was  present  at  the  grand  review  made  by  Napoleon  of 
the  columns  defiling  into  the  plain  large  enough  to  con 
tain  sixty  thousand  men.  The  throne  was  situated  on 
an  eminence  that  overlooked  the  plain,  and  Napoleon  on 
several  occasions  looked  through  a  glass  at  Bolivar  and 
his  companions,  who  were  at  the  base  of  the  hill.  The 
hero  Caesar  could  not  imagine  that  he  beheld  the  libera 
tor  of  the  world  of  Columbus  !  "  And  small  blame  to 
him,  one  "would  say.  We  are  not,  then,  it  seems,  the 
only  foundling  of  Columbus,  as  we  are  so  a£t  to  take  for 
granted.  The  great  Genoese  did  not,  as  we  supposed, 
draw  that  first  star-guided  furrow  across  the  vague  of 
waters  with  a  single  eye  to  the  future  greatness  of  the 
United  States.  And  have  we  not  sometimes,  like  the 
enthusiastic  biographer,  fancied  the  Old  World  staring 
through  all  its  telescopes  at  us,  and  wondered  that  it  did 


A  GKEAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.        91 

not  recognize  in  us  what  we  were  fully  persuaded  we 
were  going  to  be  and  do  1 

Our  American  life  is  dreadfully  barren  of  those  ele 
ments  of  the  social  picturesque  which  give  piquancy  to 
anecdote.  And  without  anecdote,  what  'is  biography,  or 
even  history,  which  is  only  biography  on  a  larger  scale  ] 
Clio,  though  she  take  airs  on  herself,  and  pretend  to  be 
"philosophy  teaching  by  example,"  is,  after  all,  but  a 
gossip  who  has  borrowed  Fame's  speaking-trumpet,  and 
should  be  figured  with  a  tea-cup  instead  of  a  scroll  in 
her  hand.  How  much  has  she  not  owed  of  late  to  the 
tittle-tattle  of  her  gillflirt  sister  Thalia  ]  In  what  gut 
ters  has  not  Macaulay  raked  for  the  brilliant  bits  with 
which  he  has  put  together  his  admirable  mosaic  picture 
of  England  under  the  last  two  Stuarts  1  Even  Mommsen 
himself,  who  dislikes  Plutarch's  method  as  much  as 
Montaigne  loved  it,  cannot  get  or  give  a  lively  notion  of 
ancient  Rome,  without  running  to  the  comic  poets  and 
the  anecdote-mongers.  He  gives  us  the  very  beef-tea 
of  history,  nourishing  and  even  palatable  enoiigh,  excel 
lently  portable  for  a  memory  that  must  carry  her  own 
packs,  and  can  afford  little  luggage ;  but  for  our  own 
part,  we  prefer  a  full,  old-fashioned  meal,  with  its  side- 
dishes  of  spicy  gossip,  and  its  last  relish,  the  Stilton 
of  scandal,  so  it  be  not  too  high.  One  volume  of  con 
temporary  memoirs,  stuffed  though  it  be  with  lies,  (for 
lies  to  be  good  for  anything  must  have  a  potential  prob 
ability,  must  even  be  true  so  far  as  their  moral  and 
social  setting  is  concerned,)  will  throw  more  light  into 
the  dark  backward  of  time  than  the  gravest  Camden  or 
Thuanus.  If  St.  Simon  is  not  accurate,  is  he  any  the 
less  essentially  true  ?  No  history  gives  us  so  clear  an 
understanding  of  the  moral  condition  of  average  men 
after  the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts  as  the  unconscious 
blabbings  of  the  Puritan  tailor's  son,  with  his  two  con- 


92  A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER. 

sciences,  as  it  were,  —  an  inward,  still  sensitive  in  spots, 
though  mostly  toughened  to  India-rubber,  and  good 
rather  for  rubbing  out  old  scores  than  retaining  them, 
and  an  outward,  alert,  and  termagautly  effective  in  Mrs. 
Pepys.  But  we  can  have  no  St.  Simons  or  Pepyses 
till  we  have  a  Paris  or  London  to  delocalize  our  gossip 
and  give  it  historic  breadth.  All  our  capitals  are  frac 
tional,  merely  greater  or  smaller  gatherings  of  men, 
centres  of  business  rather  than  of  action  or  influence. 
Each  contains  so  many  souls,  but  is  not,  as  the  word 
"  capital "  implies,  the  true  head  of  a  community  and 
seat  of  its  common  soul. 

Has  not  life  itself  perhaps  become  a  little  more  prosaic 
than  it  once  was  1  As  the  clearing  away  of  the  woods 
scants  the  streams,  may  not  our  civilization  have  dried 
up  some  feeders  that  helped  to  swell  the  current  of 
individual  and  personal  force  1  We  have  sometimes 
thought  that  the  stricter  definition  and  consequent 
seclusion  from  each  other  of  the  different  callings  in 
modern  times,  as  it  narrowed  the  chance  of  developing 
and  giving  variety  to  character,  lessened  also  the  interest 
of  biography.  Formerly  arts  and  arms  were  not  divided 
by  so  impassable  a  barrier  as  now.  There  was  hardly 
such  a  thing  as  a  pekin.  Caesar  gets  up  from  writing 
his  Latin  Grammar  to  conquer  Gaul,  change  the  course 
of  history,  and  make  so  many  things  possible,  —  among 
the  rest  our  English  language  and  Shakespeare.  Horace 
had  been  a  colonel ;  and  from  yEschylus,  who  fought  at 
Marathon,  to  Ben  Jonson,  who  trailed  a  pike  in  the  Low 
Countries,  the  list  of  martial  civilians  is  a  long  one.  A 
man's  education  seems  more  complete  who  has  smelt 
hostile  powder  from  a  less  {esthetic  distance  than  Goethe. 
It  raises  our  confidence  in  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  as  a  physi 
cist,  that  he  is  able  to  illustrate  some  theory  of  acous 
tics  in  his  Treatise  of  Bodies  by  instancing  the  effect  of 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.        93 

his  guns  in  a  sea-fight  off  Scanderoon.  One  would  ex 
pect  the  proportions  of  character  to  be  enlarged  by  such 
variety  and  contrast  of  experience.  Perhaps  it  will  by 
and  by  appear  that  our  own  Civil  War  has  done  some 
thing  for  us  in  this  way.  Colonel  Higginson  comes 
down  from  his  pulpit  to  draw  on  his  jack-boots,  and 
thenceforth  rides  in  our  imagination  alongside  of  John 
Bunyan  and  Bishop  Compton.  To  have  stored  moral 
capital  enough  to  meet  the  drafts  of  Death  at  sight, 
must  be  an  unmatched  tonic.  We  saw  our  light-hearted 
youth  come  back  with  the  modest  gravity  of  age,  as  if 
they  had  learned  to  throw  out  pickets  against  a  surprise 
of  any  weak  point  in  their  temperament.  Perhaps  that 
American  shiftiness,  so  often  complained  of,  may  not 
be  so  bad  a  thing,  if,  by  bringing  men  acquainted  with 
every  humor  of  fortune  and  human  nature,  it  puts  them 
in  fuller  possession  of  themselves. 

'But  with  whatever  drawbacks  in  special  circumstances, 
the  main  interest  of  biography  must  always  lie  in  the 
amount  of  character  or'  essential  manhood  which  the 
subject  of  it  reveals  to  us,  and  events  are  of  import 
only  as  means  to  that  end.  It  Is  true  that  lofty  and 
far-seen  exigencies  may  give  greater  opportunity  to  some 
men,  whose  energy  is  more  sharply  spurred  by  the  shout 
of  a  multitude  than  by  the  grudging  Well  done  !  of  con 
science.  Some  theorists  have  too  hastily  assumed  that, 
as  the  power  of  public  opinion  increases,  the  force  of 
private  character,  or  what  we  call  originality,  is  ab 
sorbed  into  and  diluted  by  it.  But  we  think  Horace 
was  right  in  putting  tyrant  and  mob  on  a  level  as  the 
trainers  and  tests  of  a  man's  solid  quality.  The  amount 
of  resistance  of  which  one  is  capable  to  whatever  lies 
outside  the  conscience,  is  of  more  consequence  than  all 
other  faculties  together ;  and  democracy,  perhaps,  tries 
this  by  pressure  in  more  directions,  and  with  a  more 


94        A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

continuous  strain,  than  any  other  form  of  society.  In 
Josiah  Quincy  we  have  an  example  of  character  trained 
and  shaped,  under  the  nearest  approach  to  a  pure 
democracy  the  world  has  ever  seen,  to  a  firmness,  unity, 
and  self-centred  poise  that  recall  the  finer  types  of  anti 
quity,  in  whom  the  public  and  private  man  were  so 
wholly  of  a  piece  that  they  were  truly  everywhere  at 
home,  for  the  same  sincerity  of  nature  that  dignified  the 
hearth  carried  also  a  charm  of  homeliness  into  the  forum. 
The  phrase  "a  great  public  character,"  once  common, 
seems  to  be  going  out  of  fashion,  perhaps  because  there 
are  fewer  examples  of  the  thing.  It  fits  Josiah  Quincy 
exactly.  Active  in  civic  and  academic  duties  till  beyond 
the  ordinary  period  of  man,  at  fourscore  and  ten  his  pen, 
voice,  and  venerable  presence  were  still  efficient  in  pub 
lic  affairs.  A  score  of  years  after  the  energies  of  even 
vigorous  men  are  declining  or  spent,  his  mind  and  char 
acter  made  themselves  felt  as  in  their  prime.  A  true 
pillar  of  house  and  state,  he  stood  unflinchingly  upright 
under  whatever  burden  might  be  laid  upon  him.  The 
French  Revolutionists  aped  what  was  itself  but  a  parody 
of  the  elder  republic,  with  their  hair  a  la  Bnitus  and 
their  pedantic  moralities  d  la  Cato  Minor,  but  this  man 
unconsciously  was  the  antique  Roman  they  laboriously 
went  about  to  be.  Others  have  filled  places  more  con 
spicuous,  few  have  made  the  place  they  filled  so  conspicu 
ous  by  an  exact  and  disinterested  performance  of  duty. 

In  the  biography  of  Mr.  Quincy  by  his  son  there  is 
something  of  the  provincialism  of  which  we  have-  spoken 
as  inherent  in  most  American  works  of  the  kind.  His 
was  a  Boston  life  in  the  strictest  sense.  But  provincial 
ism  is  relative,  and  where  it  has  a  flavor  of  its  own,  as 
in  Scotland,  it  is  often  agreeable  in  proportion  to  its 
very  intensity.  The  Massachusetts  in  which  Mr.  Quin 
cy' s  habits  of  thought  were  acquired  was  a  very  different 


A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER.  95 

Massachusetts  from  that  in  which  we  of  later  generations 
have  been  bred.  Till  after  he  had  passed  middle  life, 
Boston  was  more  truly  a  capital  than  any  other  city  in 
America,  before  or  since,  except  possibly  Charleston. 
The  acknowledged  head  of  New  England,  with  a  popula 
tion  of  we,llnigh  purely  English  descent,  mostly  derived 
from  the  earlier  emigration,  with  ancestral  traditions  and 
inspiring  memories  of  its  own,  it  had  made  its  name 
familiar  in  both  worlds,  and  was  both  historically  and 
politically  more  important  than  at  any  later  period. 
The  Revolution  had  not  interrupted,  but  rather  given  a 
freer  current  to  the  tendencies  of  its  past.  Both  by  its 
histoiy  and  position,  the  town  had  what  the  French  call 
a  solidarity,  an  almost  personal  consciousness,  rare  any 
where,  rare  especially  in  America,  and  more  than  ever 
since  our  enormous  importation  of  fellow-citizens  to 
whom  America  means  merely  shop,  or  meat  three  times 
a  day.  Boston  has  been  called  the  "  American  Athens." 
^Esthetically,  the  comparison  is  ludicrous,  but  politically 
it  was  more  reasonable.  Its  population  was  homogene 
ous,  and  there  were  leading  families ;  while  the  form  of 
government  by  town-meeting,  and  the  facility  of  social 
and  civic  intercourse,  gave  great  influence  to  popular 
personal  qualities  and  opportunity  to  new  men.  A  wide 
commerce,  while  it  had  insensibly  softened  the  asperities 
of  Puritanism  and  imported  enough  foreign  refinement 
to  humanize,  not  enough  foreign  luxury  to  corrupt,  had 
not  essentially  qualified  the  native  tone  of  the  town. 
Retired  sea-captains  (true  brothers  of  Chaucer's  Ship- 
man),  whose  exploits  had  kindled  the  imagination  of 
Burke,  added  a  not  unpleasant  savor  of  salt  to  society. 
They  belonged  to  the  old  school  of  Gilbert,  Hawkins, 
Frobisher,  and  Drake,  parcel-soldiers  all  of  them,  who 
had  commanded  armed  ships  and  had  tales  to  tell  of 
gallant  fights  with  privateers  or  pirates,  truest  represent- 


96         A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

atives  of  those  Vikings  who,  if  trade  in  himber  or  peltry 
was  dull,  would  make  themselves  Dukes  of  Dublin  or 
Earls  of  Orkney.  If  trade  pinches  the  mind,  commerce 
liberalizes  it;  and  Boston  was  also  advantaged  with 
the  neighborhood  of  the  country's  oldest  College,  which 
maintained  the  wholesome  traditions  of  culture,  —  where 
Homer  and  Horace  are  familiar  there  is  a  certain  amount 
of  cosmopolitanism,  —  and  would  not  allow  bigotry  to 
become  despotism.  Manners  were  more  self-respectful, 
and  therefore  more  respectful  of  others,  and  personal 
sensitiveness  was  fenced  with  more  of  that  ceremonial 
with  which  society  armed  itself  when  it  surrendered  the 
ruder  protection  of  the  sword.  We  had  not  then  seen  a 
Governor  in  his  chamber  at  the  State-House  with  his 
hat  on,  a  cigar  in  his  mouth,  and  his  feet  upon  the  stove. 
Domestic  service,  in  spite  of  the  proverb,  was  not  seldom 
an  inheritance,  nor  was  household  peace  dependent  on 
the  whim  of  a  foreign  armed  neutrality  in  the  kitchen. 
Servant  and  master  were  of  one  stock ;  there  was  decent 
authority  and  becoming  respect ;  the  tradition  of  the 
Old  World  lingered  after  its  superstition  had  passed 
away.  There  was  an  aristocracy  such  as  is  healthful 
in  a  well-ordered  community,  founded  on  public  service, 
and  hereditary  so  long  as  the  virtue  which  was  its  patent 
was  not  escheated.  The  clergy,  no  longer  hedged  by 
the  reverence  exacted  by  sacerdotal  caste,  were  more 
than  repaid  by  the  consideration  willingly  paid  to  supe 
rior  culture.  What  changes,  many  of  them  for  the  bet 
ter,  some  of  them  surely  for  the  worse,  and  all  of  them 
inevitable,  did  not  Josiah  Quincy  see  in  that  wellnigh 
secular  life  which  linked  the  war  of  independence  to  the 
war  of  nationality !  We  seemed  to  see  a  type  of  them 
the  other  day  in  a  colored  man  standing  with  an  air  of 
comfortable  self-possession  while  his  boots  were  brushed 
by  a  youth  of  catholic  neutral  tint,  but  whom  nature  had 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.        97 

planned  for  white.  The  same  eyes  that  had  looked  on 
Gage's  red-coats,  saw  Colonel  Shaw's  negro  regiment 
march  out  of  Boston  in  the  national  blue.  Seldom  has  a 
life,  itself  actively  associated  with  public  affairs,  spanned 
so  wide  a  chasm  for  the  imagination.  Oglethorpe's 
offers  a  parallel,  —  the  aide-de-camp  of  Prince  Eugene 
calling  on  John  Adams,  American  Ambassador  to  Eng 
land.  Most  long  lives  resemble  those  threads  of  gos 
samer,  the  nearest  approach  to  nothing  unmeaningly 
prolonged,  scarce  visible  pathway  of  some  worm  from 
his  cradle  to  his  grave ;  but  Quincy's  was  strung  with 
seventy  active  years,  each  one  a  rounded  bead  of  useful 
ness  and  service. 

Mr.  Quincy  was  a  Bostonian  of  the  purest  type. 
Since  the  settlement  of  the  town,  there  had  been  a 
colonel  of  the  Boston  regiment  in  every  generation  of  his 
family.  He  lived  to  see  a  grandson  brevetted  with  the 
same  title  for  gallantry  in  the  field.  Only  child  of  one 
among  the  most  eminent  advocates  of  the  Revolution, 
and  who  but  for  his  untimely  death  would  have  been  a 
leading  actor  in  it,  his  earliest  recollections  belonged  to 
the  heroic  period  in  the  history  of  his  native  town. 
With  that  history  his  life  was  thenceforth  intimately 
united  by  offices  of  public  trust,  as  Representative  in 
Congress,  State  Senator,  Mayor,  and  President  of  the 
University,  to  a  period  beyond  the  ordinary  span  of 
mortals.  Even  after  he  had  passed  ninety,  he  would 
not  claim  to  be  emeritus,  but  came  forward  to  brace  his 
townsmen  with  a  courage  and  warm  them  with  a  fire 
younger  than  their  own.  The  legend  of  Colonel  Goffe 
at  Deerfield  became  a  reality  to  the  eyes  of  this  genera 
tion.  The  New  England  breed  is  running  out,  we  are 
told !  This  was  in  all  ways  a  beautiful  and  fortunate 
life,  —  fortunate  in  the  goods  of  this  world,  —  fortunate, 
above  all,  in  the  force  of  character  which  makes  fortune 


98  A  GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER. 

secondary  and  subservient.  We  are  fond  in  this  country 
of  what  are  called  self-made  men  (as  if  real  success  could 
ever  be  other) ;  and  this  is  all  very  well,  provided  they 
make  something  worth  having  of  themselves.  Otherwise 
it  is  not  so  well,  and  the  examples  of  such  are  at  best 
but  stuff  for  the  Alnaschar  dreams  of  a  false  democracy. 
The  gist  of  the  matter  is,  not  where  a  man  starts  from, 
•but  where  he  comes  out.  We  are  glad  to  have  the 
biography  of  one  who,  beginning  as  a  gentleman,  kept 
himself  such  to  the  end,  —  who,  with  no  necessity  of 
labor,  left  behind  him  an  amount  of  thoroughly  done 
work  such  as  few  have  accomplished  with  the  mighty 
help  of  hunger.  Some  kind  of  pace  may  be  got  out  of 
the  veriest  jade  by  the  near  prospect  of  oats;  but  the 
thorough-bred  has  the  spur  in  his  blood. 

Mr.  Edmund  Quincy  has  told  the  story  of  his  father's 
life  with  the  skill  and  good  taste  that  might  have  been 
expected  from  the  author  of  "  Wensley."  Considering 
natural  partialities,  he  has  shown  a  discretion  of  which 
we  are  oftener  reminded  by  missing  than  by  meeting  it. 
He  has  given  extracts  enough  from  speeches  to  show 
their  bearing  and  quality,  —  from  letters,  to  recall  by 
gone  modes  of  thought  and  indicate  many-sided  friendly 
relations  with  good  and  eminent  men  ;  above  all,  he  has 
lost  no  opportunity  to  illustrate  that  life  of  the  past, 
near  in  date,  yet  alien  in  manners,  whose  current  glides 
so  imperceptibly  from  one  generation  into  another  that 
we  fail  to  mark  the  shiftings  of  its  bed  or  the  change  in 
its  nature  wrought  by  the  affluents  that  discharge  into 
it  on  all  sides,  — here  a  stream  bred  in  the  hills  to 
sweeten,  there  the  sewerage  of  some  great  city  to  cor 
rupt.  We  cannot  but  lament  that  Mr.  Quincy  did  not 
earlier  begin  to  keep  a  diary.  "  Miss  not  the  discourses 
of  the  elders,"  though  put  now  in  the  Apocrypha,  is  a 
wise  precept,  but  incomplete  unless  we  add,  "  Nor  cease 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.        99 

from  recording  whatsoever  thing  thou  hast  gathered 
therefrom/'  —  so  ready  is  Oblivion  with  her  fatal  shears. 
The  somewhat  greasy  heap  of  a  literary  rag-and-boue- 
picker,  like  Athenseus,  is  turned  to  gold  by  time.  Even 
the  Virgilium  vidi  tantum  of  Dry  den  about  Milton,  and 
of  Pope  again  about  Dryden,  is  worth  having,  and  gives 
a  pleasant  fillip  to  the  fancy.  There  is  much  of  this 
quality  in  Mr.  Edmund  Quincy's  book,  enough  to  make 
us  wish  there  were  more.  We  get  a  glimpse  of  President 
Washington,  in  1795,  who  reminded  Mr.  Quincy  "of 
the  gentlemen  who  used  to  come  to  Boston  in  those 
days  to  attend  the  General  Court  from  Hampden  or 
Franklin  County,  in  the  western  part  of  the  State.  A 
little  stiff  in  his  person,  not  a  little  formal  in  his  man 
ners,  not  particularly  at  ease  in  the  presence  of  strangers. 
He  had  the  air  of  a  country-gentleman  not  accustomed 
to  mix  much  in  society,  perfectly  polite,  but  hot  easy  in 
his  address  and  conversation,  and  not  graceful  in  his  gait 
and  movements."  Our  figures  of  Washington  have 
been  so  long  equestrian,  that  it  is  pleasant  to  meet  him 
dismounted  for  once.  In  the  same  way  we  get  a  card  of 
invitation  to  a  dinner  of  sixty  covers  at  John  Hancock's, 
and  see  the  rather  light-weighted  great  man  wheeled 
round  the  room  (for  he  had  adopted  Lord  Chatham's 
convenient  trick  of  the  gout)  to  converse  with  his  guests. 
In  another  place  we  are  presented,  with  Mr.  Merry,  the 
English  Minister,  to  Jefferson,  whom  we  find  in  an  un 
official  costume  of  studied  slovenliness,  intended  as  a  snub 
to  haughty  Albion.  Slippers  down  at  the  heel  and  a 
dirty  shirt  become  weapons  of  diplomacy  and  threaten 
more  serious  war.  Thus  many  a  door  into  the  past,  long 
irrevocably  shut  upon  us,  is  set  ajar,  and  we  of  the 
younger  generation  on  the  landing  catch  peeps  of  dis 
tinguished  men,  and  bits  of  their  table-talk.  We  drive 
in  from  Mr.  Lyman's  beautiful  seat  at  Waltham  (unique 


100  A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER. 

at  that  day  in  its  stately  swans  and  half-shy,  half-familiar 
deer)  with  John  Adams,  who  tells  us  that  Dr.  Priestley 
looked  on  the  French  monarchy  as  the  tenth  horn  of  the 
Beast  in  Revelation,  —  a  horn  that  has  set  more  sober 
•wits  dancing  than  that  of  Huon  of  Bordeaux.  Those 
were  days,  we  are  inclined  to  think,  of  more  solid  and 
elegant  hospitality  than  our  own,  —  the  elegance  of 
manners,  at  once  more  courtly  and  more  frugal,  of  men 
•who  had  better  uses  for  wealth  than  merely  to  display  it. 
Dinners  have  more  courses  now,  and,  like  the  Gascon  in 
the  old  story,  who  could  not  see  the  town  for  the  houses, 
we  miss  the  real  dinner  in  the  multiplicity  of  its  details. 
We  might  seek  long  before  we  found  so  good  cheer,  so 
good  company,  or  so  good  talk  as  our  fathers  had  at 
Lieutenant-Governor  Winthrop's  or  Senator  Cabot's. 

We  shall  not  do  Mr.  Edmund  Quincy  the  wrong  of 
picking  out  in  advance  all  the  plums  in  his  volume, 
leaving  to  the  reader  only  the  less  savory  mixture  that 
held  them  together,  —  a  kind  of  filling  unavoidable  in 
books  of  this  kind,  and  too  apt  to  be  what  boys  at 
boarding-school  call  stick-jaw,  but  of  which  there  is  no 
more  than  could  not  be  helped  here,  and  that  light  and 
palatable.  But  here  and  there  is  a  passage  where  we 
cannot  refrain,  for  there  is  a  smack  of  Jack  Horner  in  all 
of  us,  and  a  reviewer  were  nothing  without  it.  Josiah 
Quincy  was  born  in  1772.  His  father,  returning  from  a 
mission  to  England,  died  in  sight  of  the  dear  New  Eng 
land  shore  three  years  later.  His  young  widow  was 
worthy  of  him,  and  of  the  son  whose  character  she  was 
to  have  so  large  a  share  in  forming.  There  is  some 
thing  very  touching  and  beautiful  in  this  little  picture 
of  her  which  Mr.  Quincy  drew  in  his  extreme  old  age. 

"  My  mother  imbibed,  as  was  usual  with  the  women 
of  the  period,  the  spirit  of  the  times.  Patriotism  was 
not  then  a  profession,  but  an  energetic  principle  beating 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.       101 

in  the  heart  and  active  in  the  life.  The  death  of  my 
father,  under  circumstances  now  the  subject  of  history, 
had  overwhelmed  her  with  grief.  She  viewed  him  as 
a  victim  in  the  cause  of  freedom,  and  cultivated  Tiis 
memory  with  veneration,  regarding  him  as  a  martyr,  fall 
ing,  as  did  his  friend  Warren,  in  the  defence  of  the  liber 
ties  of  his  country.  These  circumstances  gave  a  pathos 
and  vehemence  to  her  grief,  which,  after  the  first  violence 
of  passion  had  subsided,  sought  consolation  in  earnest 
and  solicitous  fulfilment  of  duty  to  the  representative  of 
his  memory  and  of  their  mutual  affections.  Love  and 
reverence  for  the  memory  of  his  father  was  early  im 
pressed  on  the  mind  of  her  son,  and  worn  into  his  heart 
by  her  sadness  and  tears.  She  cultivated  the  memory  of 
my  father  in  my  heart  and  affections,  even  in  my  earliest 
childhood,  by  reading  to  me  passages  from  the  poets,  and 
obliging  me  to  learn  by  heart  and  repeat  such  as  were 
best  adapted  to  her  own  circumstances  and  feelings. 
Among  others,  the  whole  leave-taking  of  Hector  and 
Andromache,  in  the  sixth  book  of  Pope's  Homer,  was  one 
of  her  favorite  lessons,  which  she  made  me  learn  and  fre 
quently  repeat.  Her  imagination,  probably,  found  con 
solation  in  the  repetition  of  lines  which  brought  to  mind 
and  seemed  to  typify  her  own  great  bereavement. 

'  And  think'st  thou  not  how  wretched  we  shall  be,  — 
A  widow  I,  a  helpless  orphan  he  ?  ' 

These  lines,  and  the  whole  tenor  of  Andromache's  ad 
dress  and  circumstances,  she  identified  with  her  own 
sufferings,  which  seemed  relieved  by  the  tears  my  repe 
tition  of  them  drew  from  her." 

Pope's  Homer  is  not  Homer,  perhaps ;  but  how  many 
noble  natures  have  felt  its  elation,  how  many  bruised 
spirits  the  solace  of  its  bracing,  if  monotonous  melody  ! 
To  us  there  is  something  inexpressibly  tender  in  this  in 
stinct  of  the  widowed  mother  to  find  consolation  in  the 


102  A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER. 

idealization  of  her  grief  by  mingling  it  with  those  sor 
rows  which  genius  has  turned  into  the  perennial  delight 
of  mankind.  This  was  a  kind  of  sentiment  that  was 
healthy  for  her  boy,  refining  without  unnerving,  and  as 
sociating  his  father's  memory  with  a  noble  company  un 
assailable  by  time.  It  was  through  this  lady,  whose 
image  looks  down  on  us  out  of  the  past,  so  full  of 
sweetness  and  refinement,  that  Mr.  Quincy  became  of 
kin  with  Mr.  Wendell  Phillips,  so  justly  eminent  as  a 
speaker.  There  is  something  nearer  than  cater-cousin- 
ship  in  a  certain  impetuous  audacity  of  temper  common 
to  them  both. 

When  six  years  old,  Mr.  Quincy  was  sent  to  Phillips 
Academy  at  Andover,  where  he  remained  till  he  entered 
college.  His  form-fellow  here  was  a  man  of  thirty,  who 
had  been  a  surgeon  in  the  Continental  Army,  and 
whose  character  and  adventures  might  almost  seem  bor 
rowed  from  a  romance  of  Smollett.  Under  Principal 
Pearson,  the  lad,  though  a  near  relative  of  the  founder 
of  the  school,  seems  to  have  endured  all  that  severity  of 
the  old  a  posteriori  method  of  teaching  which  still 
smarted  in  Tusser's  memory  when  he  sang, 

"  From  Paul's  I  went,  to  Eton  sent, 
To  learn  straightways  the  Latin  phrase, 
Where  fifty-three  stripes  given  to  me 
At  once  I  had." 

The  young  victim  of  the  wisdom  of  Solomon  was  boarded 
with  the  parish  minister,  in  whose  kindness  he  found  a 
lenitive  for  the  scholastic  discipline  he  underwent.  This 
gentleman  had  been  a  soldier  in  the  Colonial  service,  and 
Mr.  Quincy  afterwards  gave  as  a  reason  for  his  mildness, 
that,  "  while  a  sergeant  at  Castle  William,  he  had  seen 
something  of  mankind."  This,  no  doubt,  would  be  a 
better  preparative  for  successful  dealing  with  the  young 
than  is  generally  thought.  However,  the  birch  was 


A  GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER.  103 

then  the  only  classic  tree,  and  every  round  in  the  ladder 
of  learning  was  made  of  its  inspiring  wood.  Dr.  Pear 
son,  perhaps,  thought  he  was  only  doing  justice  to  his 
pupil's  claims  of  kindred  by  giving  him  a  larger  share  of 
the  educational  advantages  which  the  neighboring  forest 
afforded.  The  vividness  with  which  this  system  is  al 
ways  remembered  by  those  who  have  been  subjected  to  it 
would  seem  to  show  that  it  really  enlivened  the  attention, 
and  thereby  invigorated  the  memory,  nay,  might  even 
raise  some  question  as  to  what  part  of  the  person  is  chosen 
by  the  mother  of  the  Muses  for  her  residence.  With 
an  appetite  for  the  classics  quickened  by  "  Cheever's 
Accidence,"  and  such  other  preliminary  whets  as  were 
then  in  vogue,  young  Quincy  entered  college,  where  he 
spent  the  usual  four  years,  and  was  graduated  with  the 
highest  honors  of  his  class.  The  amount  of  Latin  and 
Greek  imparted  to  the  students  of  that  day  was  not 
very  great.  They  were  carried  through  Horace,  Sallust, 
and  the  De  Oratoribus  of  Cicero,  and  read  portions  of 
Livy,  Xenophon,  and  Homer.  Yet  the  chief  end  of  clas 
sical  studies  was  perhaps  as  often  reached  then  as  now, 
in  giving  young  men  a  love  for  something  apart  from 
and  above  the  more  vulgar  associations  of  life.  Mr. 
Quincy,  at  least,  retained  to  the  last  a  fondness  for 
certain  Latin  authors.  While  he  was  President  of  the 
College,  he  told  a  gentleman,  from  whom  we  received 
the  story,  that,  "  if  he  were  imprisoned,  and  allowed 
to  choose  one  book  for  his  amusement,  that  should 
be  Horace." 

In  1797  Mr.  Quincy  was  married  to  Miss  Eliza  Susan 
Morton  of  New  York,  a  union  which  lasted  in  unbroken 
happiness  for  more  than  fifty  years.  His  case  might  be 
cited  among  the  leading  ones  in  support  of  the  old  poet's 
axiom,  that 

"  He  never  loved,  that  loved  not  at  first  sight " ; 


104  A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER. 

for  he  saw,  wooed,  and  won  in  a  week.  In  later  life  he 
tried  in  a  most  amusing  way  to  account  for  this  rash 
ness,  and  to  find  reasons  of  settled  gravity  for  the  happy 
inspiration  of  his  heart.  He  cites  the  evidence  of  Judge 
Sedgwick,  of  Air.  and  Mrs.  Oliver  Wolcott,  of  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Smith,  and  others,  to  the  wisdom  of  his  choice. 
But  it  does  not  appear  that  he  consulted  them  before 
hand.  If  love  were  not  too  cunning  for  that,  what 
would  become  of  the  charming  idyl,  renewed  in  all  its 
wonder  and  freshness  for  every  generation  1  Let  us  be 
thankful  that  in  every  man's  life  there  is  a  holiday  of 
romance,  an  illumination  of  the  senses  by  the  soul,  that 
makes  him  a  poet  while  it  lasts.  Mr.  Quincy  caught 
the  enchantment  through  his  ears,  a  song  of  Burns 
heard  from  the  next  room  conveying  the  infection,  —  a 
fact  still  inexplicable  to  him  after  lifelong  meditation 
thereon,  as  he  "  was  not  very  impressible  by  music  "  ! 
To-  us  there  is  something  very  characteristic  in  this 
rapid  energy  of  Mr.  Quincy,  something  very  delightful 
in  his  naive  account  of  the  affair.  It  needs  the  magic 
of  no  Dr.  Heidegger  to  make  these  dried  roses,  that 
drop  from  between  the  leaves  of  a  volume  shut  for 
seventy  years,  bloom  again  in  all  their  sweetness.  Mr. 
Edmund  Quincy  tells  us  that  his  mother  was  "  not  hand 
some  "  ;  but  those  who  remember  the  gracious  dignity 
of  her  old  age  will  hardly  agree  with  him.  She  must 
always  have  had  that  highest  kind  of  beauty  which 
grows  more  beautiful  with  years,  and  keeps  the  eyes 
young,  as  if  with  the  partial  connivance  of  Time. 

We  do  not  propose  to  follow  Mr.  Quincy  closely 
throiigh  his  whole  public  life,  which,  beginning  with  his 
thirty-second,  ended  with  his  seventy-third  year.  He 
entered  Congress  as  the  representative  of  a  party  pri 
vately  the  most  respectable,  publicly  the  least  sagacious, 
among  all  those  which  under  different  names  have 


A   GREAT   PUBLIC    CHARACTER.  105 

divided  the  country.  The  Federalists  were  the  only 
proper  tories  our  politics  have  ever  produced,  whose 
conservatism  truly  represented  an  idea,  and  not  a  mere 
selfish  interest,  —  men  who  honestly  distrusted  democ 
racy,  and  stood  up  for  experience,  or  the  tradition  which 
they  believed  for  such,  against  empiricism.  During 
his  Congressional  career,  the  government  was  little  more 
than  an  attache  of  the  French  legation,  and  the  opposi 
tion  to  which  he  belonged  a  helpless  revenant  from  the 
dead  and  buried  Colonial  past.  There  are  some  ques 
tions  whose  interest  dies  the  moment  they  are  settled ; 
others,  into  which  a  moral  element  enters  that  hinders 
them  from  being  settled,  though  they  may  be  decided. 
It  is  hard  to  revive  any  enthusiasm  about  the  Embargo, 
though  it  once  could  inspire  the  boyish  Muse  of  Bryant, 
or  in  the  impressment  quarrel,  though  the  Trent  diffi 
culty  for  a  time  rekindled  its  old  animosities.  The  stars 
in  their  courses  fought  against  Mr.  Quincy's  party, 
which  was  not  in  sympathy  with  the  instincts  of  the 
people,  groping  about  for  some  principle  of  nationality, 
and  finding  a  substitute  for  it  in  hatred,  of  England. 
But  there  are  several  things  which  still  make  his  career 
in  Congress  interesting  to  us,  because  they  illustrate  the 
personal  character  of  the  man.  He  prepared  himself 
honestly  for  his  duties,  by  a  thorough  study  of  whatever 
could  make  him  efficient  in  them.  It  was  not  enough 
that  he  could  make  a  good  speech ;  he  wished  also  to 
have  something  to  say.  In  Congress,  as  everywhere  else, 
quod  voluit  valde  voluit  ;  and  he  threw  a  fervor  into  the 
most  temporary  topic,  as  if  his  eternal  salvation  de 
pended  upon  it.  He  had  not  merely,  as  the  French  say, 
the  courage  of  his  opinions,  but  his  opinions  became 
principles,  and  gave  him  that  gallantry  of  fanaticism 
which  made  him  always  ready  to  head  a  forlorn  hope,  — • 
the  more  ready,  perhaps,  that  it  was  a  forlorn  hope. 


106  A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER. 

This  is  not  the  humor  of  a  statesman,  —  no,  unless  he 
holds  a  position  like  that  of  Pitt,  and  can  charge  a 
whole  people  with  his  own  enthusiasm,  and  then  we 
call  it  genius.  Mr.  Quincy  had  the  moral  firmness 
which  enabled  him  to  decline  a  duel  without  any  loss 
of  personal  prestige.  His  opposition  to  the  Louisiana 
purchase  illustrates  that  Roman  quality  in  him  to  which 
we  have  alluded.  He  would  not  conclude  the  pur 
chase  till  each  of  the  old  thirteen  States  had  signified 
its  assent.  He  was  reluctant  to  endow  a  Sabine  city 
with  the  privilege  of  Roman  citizenship.  It  is  worth 
noting,  that  while  in  Congress,  and  afterwards  in  the 
State  Senate,  many  of  his  phrases  became  the  catch 
words  of  party  politics.  He  always  dared  to  say  what 
others  deemed  it  more  prudent  only  to  think,  and  what 
ever  he  said  he  intensified  with  the  whole  ardor  of  his 
temperament.  It  is  this  which  makes  Mr.  Quincy's 
speeches  good  reading  still,  even  when  the  topics  they 
discussed  were  ephemeral.  In  one  respect  he  is  dis 
tinguished  from  the  politicians,  and  must  rank  with  the 
far-seeing  statesmen  of  his  time.  He  early  foresaw  and 
denounced  the  political  danger  with  which  the  Slave 
Power  threatened  the  Union.  His  fears,  it  is  true,  were 
aroused  for  the  balance  of  power  between  the  old  States, 
rather  than  by  any  moral  sensitiveness,  which  would, 
indeed,  have  been  an  anachronism  at  that  time.  But 
the  Civil  War  justified  his  prescience. 

It  was  as  Mayor  of  his  native  city  that  his  remark 
able  qualities  as  an  administrator  were  first  called  into 
requisition  and  adequately  displayed.  He  organized  the 
city  government,  and  put  it  in  working  order.  To  him 
we  owe  many  reforms  in  police,  in  the  management  of 
the  poor,  and  other  kindred  matters,  —  much  in  the 
way  of  cure,  still  more  in  that  of  prevention.  The  place 
demanded  a  man  of  courage  and  firmness,  and  found 
5* 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC   CHARACTER.  107 

those  qualities  almost  superabundantly  in  him.  His 
virtues  lost  him  his  office,  as  such  virtues  are  only  too 
apt  to  do  in  peaceful  times,  where  they  are  felt  more  as 
a  restraint  than  a  protection.  His  address  on  laying 
down  the  mayoralty  is  very  characteristic.  We  quote 
the  concluding  sentences  :  — 

"  And  now,  gentlemen,  standing  as  I  do  in  this  relation 
for  the  last  time  in  your  presence  and  that  of  my  fellow- 
citizens,  about  to  surrender  forever  a  station  full  of  diffi 
culty,  of  labor  and  temptation,  in  which  I  have  been, 
called  to  very  arduous  duties,  affecting  the  rights,  prop 
erty,  and  at  times  the  liberty  of  others ;  concerning 
which  the  perfect  line  of  rectitude  —  though  desired  — 
was  not  always  to  be  clearly  discerned ;  in  which  great 
interests  have  been  placed  within  my  control,  under  cir 
cumstances  in  which  it  would  have  been  easy  to  advance 
private  ends  and  sinister  projects;  —  under  these  cir 
cumstances,  I  inquire,  as  I  have  a  right  to  inquire,  — 
for  in  the  recent  contest  insinuations  have  been  cast 
against  my  integrity,  —  in  this  long  management  of 
your  affairs,  whatever  errors  have  been  committed,  — 
and  doubtless  there  have  been  many,  —  have  you  found 
in  me  anything  selfish,  anything  personal,  anything  mer 
cenary]  In  the  simple  language  of  an  ancient  seer,  I 
say,  '  Behold,  here  I  am ;  witness  against  me.  Whom 
have  I  defrauded  1  Whom  have  I  oppressed  ]  At 
whose  hands  have  I  received  any  bribe  1 ' 

"  Six  years  ago,  when  I  had  the  honor  first  to  address 
the  City  Council,  in  anticipation  of  the  event  which  has 
now  occurred,  the  following  expressions  were  used  :  '  In 
administering  the  police,  in  executing  the  laws,  in  pro 
tecting  the  rights  and  promoting  the  prosperity  of  the 
city,  its  first  officer  will  be  necessarily  beset  and  assailed 
by  individual  interests,  by  rival  projects,  by  personal  in 
fluences,  by  party  passions.  The  more  firm  and  inflexi- 


108       A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

ble  he  is  in  maintaining  the  rights  and  in  pursuing  the 
interests  of  the  city,  the  greater  is  the  probability  of  his 
becoming  obnoxious  to  the  censure  of  all  whom  he 
causes  to  be  prosecuted  or  punished,  of  all  whose  pas 
sions  he  thwarts,  of  all  whose  interests  he  opposes.' 

"  The  day  and  the  event  have  come.  I  retire  —  as  in 
that  first  address  I  told  my  fellow-citizens,  '  If,  in  con 
formity  with  the  experience  of  other  republics,  faithful 
exertions  should  be  followed  by  loss  of  favor  and  confi 
dence,'  I  should  retire  — '  rejoicing,  not,  indeed,  with  a 
public  and  patriotic,  but  with  a  private  and  individual 
joy ' ;  for  I  shall  retire  with  a  consciousness  weighed 
against  which  all  human  suffrages  are  but  as  the  light 
dust  of  the  balance." 

Of  his  mayoralty  we  have  another  anecdote  quite 
Roman  in  color.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  rifling  early  in 
the  morning  through  the  various  streets  that  he  might 
look  into  everything  with  his  own  eyes.  He  was  once 
arrested  on  a  malicious  charge  of  violating  the  city  ordi 
nance  against  fast  driving.  He  might  have  resisted,  but 
he  appeared  in  court  and  paid  the  fine,  because  it  would 
serve  as  a  good  example  "  that  no  citizen  was  above  the 
law." 

Hardly  had  Mr.  Quincy  given  up  the  government  of 
the  city,  when  he  was  called  to  that  of  the  College.  It 
is  here  that  his  stately  figure  is  associated  most  inti 
mately  and  warmly  with  the  recollections  of  the  greater 
number  who  hold  his  memory  dear.  Almost  everybody 
looks  back  regretfully  to  the  days  of  some  Consul 
Plancus.  Never  were  eyes  so  bright,  never  had  wine  so 
much  wit  and  good-fellowship  in  it,  never  were  we  our 
selves  so  capable  of  the  various  great  things  we  have 
never  done.  Nor  is  it  merely  the  sunset  of  life  that 
casts  such  a  ravishing  light  on  the  past,  and  makes  the 
western  windows  of  those  homes  of  fancy  we  have  left 


A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER. 


Ill 


forever  tremble  with  a  sentiment  of  such  sweet  regret, 
We  set  great  store  by  what  we  had,  and  cannot  have 
again,  however  indifferent  in  itself,  and  what  is  past  is 
infinitely  past.  This  is  especially  true  of  college  life, 
when  we  first  assume  the  titles  without  the  responsibili 
ties  of  manhood,  and  the  President  of  our  year  is  apt  to 
become  our  Plancus  very  early.  Popular  or  not  while 
in  office,  an  ex-president  is  always  sure  of  enthusiastic 
cheers  at  every  college  festival.  Mr.  Quincy  had  many 
qualities  calculated  to  win  favor  with  the  young,  —  that 
one  above  all  which  is  sure  to  do  it,  indomitable  pluck. 
With  him  the  dignity  was  in  the  man,  not  in  the  office. 
He  had  some  of  those  little  oddities,  too,  which  afford 
amusement  without  contempt,  and  which  rather  tend  to 
heighten  than  diminish  personal  attachment  to  superiors 
in  station.  His  punctuality  at  prayers,  and  in  dropping 
asleep  there,  his  forgetfulness  of  names,  his  singular  in 
ability  to  make  even  the  shortest  off-hand  speech  to  the 
students,  —  all  the  more  singular  in  a  practised  ora 
tor,  —  his  occasional  absorption  of  mind,  leading  him  to 
hand  you  his  sand-box  instead  of  the  leave  of  absence  he 
had  just  dried  with  it,  —  the  old-fashioned  courtesy  of 
his,  "  Sir,  your  servant,"  as  he  bowed  you  out  of  his 
study,  —  all  tended  to  make  him  popular.  He  had  also 
a  little  of  what  is  somewhat  contradictorily  called  dry 
humor,  not  without  influence  in  his  relations  with  the 
students.  In  taking  leave  of  the  graduating  class,  he 
was  in  the  habit  of  paying  them  whatever  honest  com 
pliment  he  could.  Who,  of  a  certain  year  Avhich  shall 
be  nameless,  will  ever  forget  the  gravity  with  which  he 
assured  them  that  they  were  "  the  best-dressed  class  that 
had  passed  through  college  during  his  administration  "  ? 
How  sincerely  kind  he  was,  how  considerate  of  youthful 
levity,  will  always  be  gratefully  remembered  by  whoever 
had  occasion  to  experience  it.  A  visitor  not  long  before 


108      A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

fcj  deatn  found  him  buming  some  memoranda  of  college 
peccadilloes,  lest  they  should  ever  rise  up  in  judgment 
against  the  men  eminent  in  Church  and  State  who  had 
been  guilty  of  them.  One  great  element  of  his  popu 
larity  with  the  students  was  his  esprit  de  cotys.  How 
ever  strict  in  discipline,  he  "was  always  on  our  side  as  re 
spected  the  outside  world.  Of  his  efficiency,  no  higher 
testimony  could  be  asked  than  that  of  his  successor,  Dr. 
Walker.  Here  also  many  reforms  date  from  his  time. 
He  had  that  happiest  combination  for  a  wise  vigor  in 
the  conduct  of  affairs,  —  he  was  a  conservative  with  an 
open  mind. 

One  would  be  apt  to  think  that,  in  the  various  offices 
which  Mr.  Quincy  successively  filled,  he  would  have 
found  enough  to  do.  But  his  indefatigable  activity  over 
flowed.  Even  as  a  man  of  letters,  he  occupies  no  incon 
siderable  place.  His  "  History  of  Harvard  College  "  is 
a  valuable  and  entertaining  treatment  of  a  subject  not 
wanting  in  natural  dryness.  His  "  Municipal  History 
of  Boston,"  his  "  History  of  the  Boston  Athenreum," 
and  his  "  Life  of  Colonel  Shaw  "  have  permanent  interest 
and  value.  All  these  were  works  demanding  no  little 
labor  and  research,  and  the  thoroughness  of  their  work 
manship  makes  them  remarkablc^is  the  by-productions 
of  a  busy  man.  Having  consented,  when  more  than 
eighty,  to  write  a  memoir  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  to  be 
published  in  the  "  Proceedings  "  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society,  he  was  obliged  to  excuse  himself. 
On  account  of  his  age  1  Not  at  all,  but  because  the 
work  had  grown  to  be  a  volume  under  his  weariless 
hand.  Ohne  Hast  ohne  Rast,  was  as  true  of  him  as  of 
Goethe.  We  find  the  explanation  of  his  accomplishing 
so  much  in  a  rule  of  life  which  he  gave,  when  President, 
to  a  young  man  employed  as  his  secretary,  and  who  was 
a  little  behindhand  with  his  work  :  "  When  you  have  a 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.        Ill 

number  of  duties  to  perform,  always  do  the  most  dis 
agreeable  one  first."  No  advice  could  have  been  more 
in  character,  and  it  is  perhaps  better  than  the  great 
German's,  "Do  the  duty  that  lies  nearest  thee." 

Perhaps  the  most  beautiful  part  of  Mr.  Quincy's  life 
was  his  old  age.  What  in  most  men  is  decay,  was 
in  him  but  beneficent  prolongation  and  adjournment. 
His  interest  in  affairs  unabated,  his  judgment  undimmed, 
his  fire  unchilled,  his  last  years  were  indeed  "  lovely  as 
a  Lapland  night."  Till  within  a  year  or  two  of  its  fall, 
there  were  no  signs  of  dilapidation  in  that  stately  edifice. 
Singularly  felicitous  was  Mr.  Winthrop's  application  to 
him  of  Wordsworth's  verses  :  — 

"  The  monumental  pomp  of  age 
Was  in  that  goodly  personage.'' 

Eveiything  that  Macbeth  foreboded  the  want  of,  he  had 
in  deserved  abundance,  —  the  love,  the  honor,  the  obe 
dience,  the  troops  of  friends.  His  equanimity  was  beau 
tiful.  He  loved  life,  as  men  of  large  vitality  always  do, 
but  he  did  not  fear  to  lose  life  by  changing  the  scene  of 
it.  Visiting  him  in  his  ninetieth  year  with  a  friend,  he 
said  to  us,  among  other  things :  "  I  have  no  desire  to 
die,  but  also  no  reluctance.  Indeed,  I  have  a  considera 
ble  curiosity  about  the  other  world.  I  have  never  been 
to  Europe,  you  know."  Even  in  his  extreme  senescence 
there  was  an  April  mood  somewhere  in  his  nature  "that 
put  a  spirit  of  youth  in  everything."  He  seemed  to  feel 
that  he  could  draw  against  an  unlimited  credit  of  years. 
When  eighty-two,  he  said  smilingly  to  a  young  man  just 
returned  from  a,  foreign  tour,  "  Well,  well,  I  mean  to  go 
myself  when  I  am  old  enough  to  profit  by  it."  We  have 
seen  many  old  men  whose  lives  were  mere  waste  and 
desolation,  who  made  longevity  disreputable  by  their 
untimely  persistence  in  it ;  but  in  Mr.  Quincy's  length 
of  years  there  was  nothing  that  was  not  venerable.  To 


112  A   GREAT   PUBLIC   CHARACTER. 

him  it  was  fulfilment,  not  deprivation;  the  days  were 
marked  to  the  last  for  what  they  brought,  not  for  what 
they  took  away. 

The  memory  of  what  Mr.  Quincy  did  will  be  lost  in 
the  crowd  of  newer  activities ;  it  is  the  memory  of  what 
he  was  that  is  precious  to  us.  Bonum  virum  facile 
crederes,  magnum  libmter.  If  John  Winthrop  be  the 
highest  type  of  the  men  who  shaped  New  England,  we 
can  find  no  better  one  of  those  whom  New  England  has 
shaped  than  Josiah  Quincy.  It  is  a  figure  that  we  can 
contemplate  with  more  than  satisfaction,  —  a  figure  of 
admirable  example  in  a  democracy  as  that  of  a  model 
citizen.  His  courage  and  high-mindedness  were  personal 
to  him ;  let  us  believe  that  his  integrity,  his  industry, 
his  love  of  letters,  his  devotion  to  duty,  go  in  some  sort 
to  the  credit  of  the  society  which  gave  him  birth  and 
formed  his  character.  In  one  respect  he  is  especially 
interesting  to  us,  as  belonging  to  a  class  of  men  of  whom 
he  was  the  last  representative,  and  whose  like  we  shall 
never  see  again.  Born  and  bred  in  an  age  of  greater 
social  distinctions  than  ours,  he  was  an  aristocrat  in 
a  sense  that  is  good  even  in  a  republic.  He  had  the 
sense  of  a  certain  personal  dignity  inherent  in  him,  and 
which  could  not  be  alienated  by  any  whim  of  the  popu 
lar  will.  There  is  no  stouter  buckler  than  this  for  inde 
pendence  of  spirit,  no  surer  guaranty  of  that  courtesy 
which,  in  its  consideration  of  others,  is  but  paying  a 
debt  of  self-respect.  During  his  presidency,  Mr.  Quincy 
was  once  riding  to  Cambridge  in  a  crowded  omnibus.  A 
colored  woman  got  in,  and  could  nowhere  find  a  seat. 
The  President  instantly  gave  her  his  own,  and  stood  the 
rest  of  the  way,  a  silent  rebuke  of  the  general  rudeness. 
He  was  a  man  of  quality  in  the  true  sense,  —  of  quality 
not  hereditary,  but  personal.  Position  might  be  taken 
from  him,  but  he  remained  where  he  was.  In  what  he 


A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER.       113 

valued  most,  his  sense  of  personal  worth,  the  world's 
opinion  could  neither  help  nor  hinder.  We  do  not 
mean  that  this  was  conscious  in  him;  if  it  had  been, 
it  would  have  been  a  weakness.  It  was  an  instinct,  and 
acted  with  the  force  and  promptitude  proper  to  suqh. 
Let  us  hope  that  the  scramble  of  democracy  will  give  us 
something  as  good ;  anything  of  so  classic  dignity  we 
shall  not  look  to  see  again. 

Josiah  Quincy  was  no  seeker  of  office ;  from  first  to 
last  he  and  it  were  drawn  together  by  the  mutual  attrac 
tion  of  need  and  fitness,  and  it  clung  to  him  as  most 
men  cling  to  it.  The  people  often  make  blunders  in 
their  choice  ;  they  are  apt  to  mistake  presence  of  speech 
for  presence  of  mind ;  they  love  so  to  help  a  man  rise 
from  the  ranks,  that  they  Avill  spoil  a  good  demagogue  to 
make  a  bad  general ;  a  great  many  faults  may  be  laid  at 
their  door,  but  they  are  not  fairly  to  be  charged  with 
fickleness.  They  are  constant  to  whoever  is  constant  to 
his  real  self,  to  the  best  manhood  that  is  in  him,  and 
not  to  the  mere  selfishness,  the  antica  lupa  so  cunning  to 
hide  herself  in  the  sheep's  fleece  even  from  ourselves. 
It  is  true,  the  contemporary  world  is  apt  to  be  the  gull 
of  brilliant  parts,  and  the  maker  of  a  lucky  poem  or 
picture  or  statue,  the  winner  of  a  lucky  battle,  gets  per 
haps  more  than  is  due  to  the  solid  result  of  his  triumph. 
It  is  time  that  fit  honor  should  be  paid  also  to  him  who 
shows  a  genius  for  public  usefulness,  for  the  achieve 
ment  of  character,  who  shapes  his  life  to  a  certain  classic 
proportion,  and  comes  off  conqueror  on  those  inward 
fields  where  something  more  than  mere  talent  is  de 
manded  for  victory.  The  memory  of  such  men  should 
be  cherished  as  the  most  precious  inheritance  which  one 
generation  can  bequeath  to  the  next.  However  it  might 
be  with  popular  favor,  public  respect  followed  Mr. 
Quinoy  unwaveringly  for  .seventy  years,  and  it  was 

H 


114       A  GREAT  PUBLIC  CHARACTER. 

because  he  had  never  forfeited  his  own.  In  this,  it 
appears  to  us,  lies  the  lesson  of  his  life,  and  his  claim 
upon  our  grateful  recollection.  It  is  this  which  makes 
him  an  example,  while  the  careers  of  so  many  of  our 
prominent  men  are  only  useful  for  warning.  As  regards 
history,  his  greatness  was  narrowly  provincial ;  but  if 
the  measure  of  deeds  be  the  spirit  in  which  they  are 
done,  that  fidelity  to  instant  duty,  which,  according  to 
Herbert,  makes  an  action  fine,  then  his  length  of  years 
should  be  very  precious  to  us  for  its  lesson.  Talleyrand, 
whose  life  may  be  compared  with  his  for  the  strange 
vicissitude  which  it  witnessed,  carried  with  him  out  of 
the  world  the  respect  of  no  man,  least  of  all  his  own ; 
and  how  many  of  our  own  public  men  have  we  seen 
whose  old  age  but  accumulated  a  disregard  which  they 
would  gladly  have  exchanged  for  oblivion !  In  Quincy 
the  public  fidelity  was  loyal  to  the  private,  and  the  with 
drawal  of  his  old  age  was  into  a  sanctuary,  —  a  diminu 
tion  of  publicity  with  addition  of  influence. 

"  Conclude  we,  then,  felicity  consists 

Not  in  exterior  fortunes 

Sacred  felicity  doth  ne'er  extend 
Beyond  itself.  .... 
The  swelling  of  an  outward  fortune  can 
Create  a  prosperous,  not  a  happy  man." 


CARLYLE.' 


A  FEELING  of  comical  sadness  is  likely  to  come 
over  the  mind  of  any  middle-aged  man  who  sets 
himself  to  recollecting  the  names  of  different  authors 
that  have  been  famous,  and  the  number  of  contemporary 
immortalities  whose  end  he  has  seen  since  coming  to  man 
hood.  Many  a  light,  hailed  by  too  careless  observers  as 
a  fixed  star,  has  proved  to  be  only  a  short-lived  lantern 
at  the  tail  of  a  newspaper  kite.  That  literary  heaven 
which  our  youth  saw  dotted  thick  with  rival  glories,  we 
find  now  to  have  been  a  stage-sky  merely,  artificially 
enkindled  from  behind  ;  and  the  cynical  daylight  which 
is  sure  to  follow  all  theatrical  enthusiasms  shows  us 
ragged  holes  where  once  were  luminaries,  sheer  vacancy 
instead  of  lustre.  Our  earthly  reputations,  says  a  great 
poet,  are  the  color  of  grass,  and  the  same  sun  that 
makes  the  green  bleaches  it  out  again.  But  next  morn 
ing  is  not  the  time  to  criticise  the  scene-painter's  firma 
ment,  nor  is  it  quite  fair  to  examine  coldly  a  part  of 
some  general  illusion  in  the  absence  of  that  sympathetic 
enthusiasm,  that  self-surrender  of  the  fancy,  which  made 
it  what  it  was.  It  would  not  be  safe  for  all  neglected 
authors  to  comfort  themselves  in  Wordsworth's  fashion, 
inferring  genius  in  an  inverse  proportion  to  public  favor, 
and  a  high  and  solitary  merit  from  the  world's  indiffer 
ence.  On  the  contrary,  it  would  be  more  just  to 
argue  from  popularity  a  certain  amount  of  real  value, 
*  Apropos  of  his  Frederick  the  Great. 


116  .  CARLYLE. 

though  it  may  not  be  of  that  permanent  quality  which 
insures  enduring  fame.  The  contemporary  world  and 
Wordsworth  were  both  half  right.  He  undoubtedly 
owned  and  worked  the  richest  vein  of  his  period ;  but 
he  offered  to  his  contemporaries  a  heap  of  gold-bearing 
quartz  where  the  baser  mineral  made  the  greater  show, 
and  the  purchaser  must  do  his  own  crushing  and  smelt 
ing,  with  no  guaranty  but  the  bare  word  of  the  miner. 
It  was  not  enough  that  certain  bolder  adventurers 
should  now  and  then  show  a  nugget  in  proof  of  the 
success  of  their  venture.  The  gold  of  the  poet  must 
be  refined,  moulded,  stamped  with  the  image  and  super 
scription  of  his  time,  but  with  a  beauty  of  design  and 
finish  that  are  of  no  time.  The  work  must  surpass  the 
material.  Wordsworth  was  wholly  void  of  that  shaping 
imagination  which  is  the  highest  criterion  of  a  poet. 

Immediate  popularity  and  lasting  fame,  then,  would 
seem  to  be  the  result  of  different  qualities,  and  not  of 
mere  difference  in  degree.  It  is  safe  to  prophesy  a 
certain  durability  of  recognition  for  any  author  who 
gives  evidence  of  intellectual  force,  in  whatever  kind, 
above  the  average  amount.  There  are  names  in  literary 
history  which  are  only  names ;  and  the  works  associated 
with  them,  like  acts  of  Congress  already  agreed  on  in 
debate,  are  read  by  their  titles  and  passed.  What  is  it 
that  insures  what  may  be  called  living  fame,  so  that  a 
book  shall  be  at  once  famous  and  read  ]  What  is  it 
that  relegates  divine  Cowley  to  that  remote,  uncivil 
Pontus  of  the  "  British  Poets,"  and  keeps  garrulous 
Pepys  within  the  cheery  circle  of  the  evening  lamp  and 
fire  1  Originality,  eloquence,  sense,  imagination,  not 
one  of  them  is  enough  by  itself,  but  only  in  some  happy 
mixture  and  proportion.  Imagination  seems  to  possess 
in  itself  more  of  the  antiseptic  property  than  any  other 
single  quality ;  but,  without  less  showy  and  more  sub- 


CARLYLE.  117 

stantial  allies,  it  can  at  best  give  only  deathlessness, 
without  the  perpetual  youth  that  makes  it  other  than 
dreary.  It  were  easy  to  find  examples  of  this  Tithonus 
immortality,  setting  its  victims  apart  from  both  gods 
and  men ;  helpless  duration,  undying,  to  be  sure,  but 
sapless  and  voiceless  also,  and  long  ago  deserted  by  the 
fickle  Hemera.  And  yet  chance  could  confer  that  gift 
on  Glaucus,  which  love  and  the  consent  of  Zeus  failed 
to  secure  for  the  darling  of  the  Dawn.  Is  it  mere  luck, 
then  1  Luck  may,  and  often  does,  have  some  share  in 
ephemeral  successes,  as  in  a  gambler's  winnings  spent  as 
soon  as  got,  but  not  in  any  lasting  triumph  over  time. 
Solid  success  must  be  based  on  solid  qualities  and  the 
honest  culture  of  them. 

The  first  element  of  contemporary  popularity  is  un 
doubtedly  the  power  of  entertaining.  If  a  man  have 
anything  to  tell,  the  world  cannot  be  expected  to  listen 
to  him  unless  he  have  perfected  himself  in  the  best  way 
of  telling  it.  People  are  not  to  be  argued  into  a 
pleasurable  sensation,  nor  is  taste  to  be  compelled  by 
any  syllogism,  however  stringent.  An  author  may  make 
himself  very  popular,  however,  and  even  justly  so,  by 
appealing  to  the  passion  of  the  moment,  without  having 
anything  in  him  that  shall  outlast  the  public  whim 
which  he  satisfies.  Churchill  is  a  remarkable  example 
of  this.  He  had  a  surprising  extemporary  vigor  of 
mind ;  his  phrase  carries  great  weight  of  blow ;  he  un 
doubtedly  surpassed  all  contemporaries,  as  Cowper  says 
of  him,  in  a  certain  rude  and  earth-born  vigor ;  but  his 
verse  is  dust  and  ashes  now,  solemnly  inurned,  of  course, 
in  the  Chalmers  columbarium,  and  without  danger  of 
violation.  His  brawn  and  muscle  are  fading  traditions, 
while  the  fragile,  shivering  genius  of  Cowper  is  still  a 
good  life  on  the  books  of  the  Critical  Insurance  Office. 
"  Is  it  not,  then,  loftiness  of  mind  that  puts  one  by  the 


118  CABLYLE. 

side  of  Virgil  1 "  cries  poor  old  Cavalcanti  at  his  wits' 
end.  Certainly  not  altogether  that.  There  must  be 
also  the  great  Mantuan's  art;  his  power,  not  only  of 
being  strong  in  parts,  but  of  making  those  parts  cohe 
rent  in  an  harmonious  whole,  and  tributary  to  it.  Gray, 
if  we  may  believe  the  commentators,  has  not  an  idea, 
scarcely  an  epithet,  that  he  can  call  his  own ;  and  yet 
he  is,  in  the  best  sense,  one  of  the  classics  of  English 
literature.  He  had  exquisite  felicity  of  choice ;  his 
dictionary  had  no  vulgar  word  in  it,  no  harsh  one,  but 
all  culled  from  the  luckiest  moods  of  poets,  and  with  a 
faint  but  delicious  aroma  of  association  ;  he  had  a  per 
fect  sense  of  sound,  and  one  idea  without  which  all  the 
poetic  outfit  (si  abstt  prudentia)  is  of  little  avail,  —  that 
of  combination  and  arrangement,  in  short,  of  art.  The 
poets  from  whom  he  helped  himself  have  no  more  clau?i 
to  any  of  his  poems  as  wholes,  than  the  various  beauties 
of  Greece  (if  the  old  story  were  true)  to  the  Venus  of 
the  artist. 

Imagination,  as  we  have  said,  has  more  virtue  to  keep 
a  book  alive  than  any  other  single  faculty.  Burke  is 
rescued  from  the  usual  doom  of  orators,  because  his 
learning,  his  experience,  his  sagacity  are  rimmed  with  a 
halo  by  this  bewitching  light  behind  the  intellectual  eye 
from  the  highest  heaven  of  the  brain.  Shakespeare  has 
impregnated  his  common  sense  with  the  steady  glow  of 
it,  and  answers  the  mood  of  youth  and  age,  of  high  and 
low,  immortal  as  that  dateless  substance  of  the  soul  he 
wrought  in.  To  have  any  chance  of  lasting,  a  book 
must  satisfy,  not  merely  some  fleeting  fancy  of  the  day, 
but  a  constant  longing  and  hunger  of  human  nature ; 
and  it  needs  only  a  superficial  study  of  literature  to  be 
convinced  that  real  fame  depends  rather  on  the  sum  of 
an  author's  powers  than  on  any  brilliancy  of  special 
parts.  There  must  be  wisdom  as  well  as  wit,  sense  no 


CARLYLE.  119 

less  than  imagination,  judgment  in  equal  measure  with 
fancy,  and  the  fiery  rocket  must  be  bound  fast  to  the 
poor  wooden  stick  that  gives  it  guidance  if  it  would 
mount  and  draw  all  eyes.  There  are  some  who  think 
that  the  brooding  patience  which  a  great  work  calls  for 
belonged  exclusively  to  an  earlier  period  than  ours. 
Others  lay  the  blame  on  our  fashion  of  periodical  publi 
cation,  which  necessitates  a  sensation  and  a  crisis  in 
every  number,  and  forces  the  writer  to  strive  for  start 
ling  effects,  instead  of  that  general  lowness  of  tone 
which  is  the  last  achievement  of  the  artist.  The  sim 
plicity  of  antique  passion,  the  homeliness  of  antique 
pathos,  seem  not  merely  to  be  gone  out  of  fashion,  but 
out  of  being  as  well.  Modern  poets  appear  rather  to 
tease  their  words  into  a  fury,  than  to  infuse  them  with 
the  deliberate  heats  of  their  matured  conception,  and 
strive  to  replace  the  rapture  of  the  mind  with  a  fervid 
intensity  of  phrase.  Our  reaction  from  the  decorous 
platitudes  of  the  last  century  has  no  doubt  led  us  to  ex 
cuse  this,  and  to  be  thankful  for  something  like  real  fire, 
though  of  Stubble  ;  but  our  prevailing  style  of  criticism, 
which  regards  parts  rather  than  wholes,  which  dwells  on 
the  beauty  of  passages,  and,  above  all,  must  have  its 
languid  nerves  pricked  with  the  expected  sensation  at 
whatever  cost,  has  done  all  it  could  to  confirm  us  in  our 
evil  way.  Passages  are  good  when  they  lead  to  some 
thing,  when  they  are  necessary  parts  of  the  building, 
but  they  are  not  good  to  dwell  in.  This  taste  for  the 
startling  reminds  us  of  something  which  happened  once 
at  the  burning  of  a  country  meeting-house.  The  build 
ing  stood  on  a  hill,  and,  apart  from  any  other  considera 
tions,  the  fire  was  as  picturesque  as  could  be  desired. 
When  all  was  a  black  heap,  licking  itself  here  and  there 
with  tongues  of  fire,  there  rushed  up  a  farmer  gasping 
anxiously,  "Hez  the  bell  fell  yit?"  An  ordinary  fire 


120  CARLYLE. 

was  no  more  to  him  than  that  on  his  hearthstone ;  even 
the  burning  of  a  meeting-house,  in  itself  a  vulcanic 
rarity,  (so  long  as  he  was  of  another  parish,)  could  not 
tickle  his  outworn  palate ;  but  he  had  hoped  for  a  cer 
tain  tang  in  the  downcome  of  the  bell  that  might  recall 
the  boyish  flavor  of  conflagration.  There  was  something 
dramatic,  no  doubt,  in  this  surprise  of  the  brazen  senti 
nel  at  his  post,  but  the  breathless  rustic  has  always 
seemed  to  us  a  type  of  the  prevailing  delusion  in  aesthet 
ics.  Alas  !  if  the  bell  must  fall  in  every  stanza  or  every 
monthly  number,  how  shall  an  author  contrive  to  stir  us 
at  last,  unless  with  whole  Moscows,  crowned  with  the 
tintinnabulary  crash  of  the  Kremlin  1  For  ourselves,  we 
are  glad  to  feel  that  we  ai*e  still  able  to  find  content 
ment  in  the  more  conversational  and  domestic  tone 
of  our  old-fashioned  wood-fire.  No  doubt  a  great  part 
of  our  pleasure  in  reading  is  unexpectedness,  whether  in 
turn  of  thought  or  of  phrase;  but  an  emphasis  out 
of  place,  an  intensity  of  expression  not  founded  on 
sincerity  of  moral  or  intellectual  conviction,  reminds  one 
of  the  underscorings  in  young  ladies'  letters,  a  wonder 
even  to  themselves  under  the  colder  north-light  of  ma- 
tronage.  It  is  the  part  of  the  critic,  however,  to  keep 
cool  under  whatever  circumstances,  and  to  reckon  that 
the  excesses  of  an  author  will  be  at  first  more  attractive 
to  the  many  than  that  average  power  which  shall  win 
him  attention  with  a  new  generation  of  men.  It  is 
seldom  found  out  by  the  majority,  till  after  a  considera 
ble  interval,  that  he  was  the  original  man  who  contrived 
to  be  simply  natural,  —  the  hardest  lesson  in  the  school 
of  art  and  the  latest  learned,  if,  indeed,  it  be  a  thing 
capable  of  acquisition  at  all.  The  most  winsome  and 
wayward  of  brooks  draws  now  and  then  some  lover's  foot 
to  its  intimate  reserve,  while  the  spirt  of  a  bursting 
water-pipe  gathers  a  gaping  crowd  forthwith. 


CARLYLE.  121 

Mr.  Carlyle  is  an  author  who  has  now  been  so  long 
before  the  world,  that  we  may  feel  toward  him  some 
thing  of  the  unprejudice  of  posterity.  It  has  long  been 
evident  that  he  had  no  more  ideas  to  bestow  upon 
us,  and  that  no  new  turn  of  his  kaleidoscope  would  give 
us  anything  but  some  variation  of  arrangement  in  the 
brilliant  colors  of  his  style.  It  is  perhaps  possible,  then, 
to  arrive  at  some  not  wholly  inadequate  estimate  of  his 
place  as  a  writer,  and  especially  of  the  value  of  the  ideas 
whose  advocate  he  makes  himself,  with  a  bitterness  and 
violence  that  increase,  as  it  seems  to  us,  in  proportion  as 
his  inward  conviction  of  their  truth  diminishes. 

The  leading  characteristics  of  an  author  who  is  in  any 
sense  original,  that  is  to  say,  who  does  not  merely  repro 
duce,  but  modifies  the  influence  of  tradition,  culture,  and 
contemporary  thought  upon  himself  by  some  admixture 
of  his  own,  may  commonly  be  traced  more  or  less  clearly 
in  his  earliest  works.  This  is  more  strictly  true,  no 
doubt,  of  poets,  because  the  imagination  is  a  fixed  quan 
tity,  not  to  be  increased  by  any  amount  of  study  and 
reflection.  Skill,  wisdom,  and  even  wit  are  cumulative ; 
but  that  diviner  faculty,  which  is  the  spiritual  eye, 
though  it  may  be  trained  and  sharpened,  cannot  be 
added  to  by  taking  thought.  This  has  always  been 
something  innate,  unaccountable,  to  be  laid  to  a  happy 
conjunction  of  the  stars.  Goethe,  the  last  of  the  great 
poets,  accordingly  takes  pains  to  tell  us  under  what 
planets  he  was  born ;  and  in  him  it  is  curious  how 
uniform  the  imaginative  quality  is  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  of  his  long  literary  activity.  His  early  poems 
show  maturity,  his  mature  ones  a  youthful  freshness. 
The  apple  already  lies  potentially  in  the  blossom,  as 
that  may  be  traced  also  in  the  ripened  fruit.  With 
a  mere  change  of  emphasis,  Goethe  might  be  called  an 
old  boy  at  both  ends  of  his  career. 
6 


122  CARLYLE. 

In  the  earliest  authorship  of  Mr.  Carlyle  we  find  some 
not  obscure  hints  of  the  future  man.  Nearly  fifty  years 
ago  he  contributed  a  few  literary  and  critical  articles  to 
the  Edinburgh  Encyclopaedia.  The  outward  fashion  of 
them  is  that  of  the  period ;  but  they  are  distinguished 
by  a  certain  security  of  judgment  remarkable  at  any 
time,  remarkable  especially  in  one  so  young.  British 
criticism  has  been  always  more  or  less  parochial ;  has 
never,  indeed,  quite  freed  itself  from  sectarian  cant,  and 
planted  itself  honestly  on  the  aesthetic  point  of  view. 
It  cannot  quite  persuade  itself  that  truth  is  of  immortal 
essence,  totally  independent  of  all  assistance  from  quar 
terly  journals  or  the  British  army  and  navy.  Carlyle, 
in  these  first  essays,  already  shows  the  influence  of  his 
master,  Goethe,  the  most  widely  receptive  of  critics.  In 
a  compact  notice  of  Montaigne,  there  is  not  a  word  as  to 
his  religious  scepticism.  The  character  is  looked  at 
purely  from  its  human  and  literary  sides.  As  illustrat 
ing  the  bent  of  the  author's  mind,  the  following  passage 
is  most  to  our  purpose :  "A  modern  reader  will  not 
easily  cavil  at  the  patjent  and  good-natured,  though  ex 
uberant  egotism  which  brings  back  to  our  view  'the 
form  and  pressure '  of  a  time  long  past.  The  habits  and 
humors,  the  mode  of  acting  and  thinking,  which  character' 
ized  a  Gascon  gentleman  in  the  sixteenth  century,  cannot 
fail  to  amuse  an  inquirer  of  the  nineteenth;  ivhile  the 
faithful  delineation  of  human  feelings,  in  all  their  strength 
and  weakness,  will  serve  as  a  mirror  to  every  mind  capable 
of  self-examination.11  We  find  here  no  uncertain  indica 
tion  of  that  eye  for  the  moral  picturesque,  and  that 
sympathetic  appreciation  of  character,  which  within  the 
next  few  years  were  to  make  Carlyle  the  first  in  insight 
of  English  critics  and  the  most  vivid  of  English  histo 
rians.  In  all  his  earlier  writing  he  never  loses  sight  of 
his  master's  great  rule,  Den  Gegenstand  fest  zu  halten. 


CAELYLE.  123 

He  accordingly  gave  to  Englishmen  tne  first  humanly 
possible  likeness  of  Voltaire,  Diderot,  Mirabeau,  and 
others,  who  had  hitherto  been  measured  by  the  usual 
British  standard  of  their  respect  for  the  geognosy  of 
Moses  and  the  historic  credibility  of  the  Books  of  Chron 
icles.  What  was. the  real  meaning  of  this  phenomenon] 
what  the  amount  of  this  man's  honest  performance  in  the 
world  ]  and  in  what  does  he  show  that  family-likeness, 
common  to  all  the  sons  of  Adam,  which  gives  us  a  fair 
hope  of  being  able  to  comprehend  him  1  These  were  the 
questions  which  Carlylc  seems  to  have  set  himself  hon 
estly  to  answer  in  the  critical  writings  which  fill  the  first 
period  of  his  life  as  a  man  of  letters.  In  this  mood  he 
rescued  poor  Boswell  from  the  unmerited  obloquy  of  an 
ungrateful  generation,  and  taught  us  to  see  something 
half-comically  beautiful  in  the  poor,  weak  creature,  with 
his  pathetic  instinct  of  reverence  for  what  was  nobler, 
wiser,  and  stronger  than  himself.  Everything  that  Mr. 
Carlyle  wrote  during  this  first  period  thrills  with  the 
purest  appreciation  of  whatever  is  brave  and  beautiful 
in  human  nature,  with  the  most  vehement  scorn  of 
cowardly  compromise  with  things  base ;  and  yet,  immit 
igable  as  his  demand  for  the  highest  in  us  seems  to  be, 
there  is  always  something  reassuring  in  the  humorous 
sympathy  with  mortal  frailty  which  softens  condemna 
tion  and  consoles  for  shortcoming.  The  remarkable 
feature  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  criticism  (see,  for  example,  his 
analysis  and  exposition  of  Goethe's  "Helena")  is  the 
sleuth-hound  instinct  with  which  he  presses  on  to  the 
matter  of  his  theme,  —  never  turned  aside  by  a  false 
scent,  regardless  of  the  outward  beauty  of  form,  some 
times  almost  contemptuous  of  it,  in  his  hunger  after  the 
intellectual  nourishment  which  it  may  hide.  The  deli 
cate  skeleton  of  admirably  articulated  and  related  parts 
which  underlies  and  sustains  every  true  work  of  art,  and 


124  CARLYLE. 

keeps  it  from  sinking  on  itself  a  shapeless  heap,  he 
would  crush  remorselessly  to  come  at  the  marrow  of 
meaning.  With  him  the  ideal  sense  is  secondary  to  the 
ethical  and  metaphysical,  and  he  has  but  a  faint  con 
ception  of  their  possible  unity. 

By  degrees  the  humorous  element  in  his  nature  gains 
ground,  till  it  overmasters  all  the  rest.  Becoming  al 
ways  more  boisterous  and  obtrusive,  it  ends  at  last,  as 
such  humor  must,  in  cynicism.  In  "  Sartor  Resartus  " 
it  is  still  kindly,  still  infused  with  sentiment ;  and  the 
book,  with  its  mixture  of  indignation  and  farce,  strikes 
one  as  might  the  prophecies  of  Jeremiah,  if  the  marginal 
comments  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Sterne  in  his  wildest  mood 
had  by  some  accident  been  incorporated  with  the  text. 
In  "Sartor"  the  marked  influence  of  Jean  Paul  is  un 
deniable,  both  in  matter  and  manner.  It  is  curious  for 
one  who  studies  the  action  and  reaction  of  national  liter 
atures  on  each  other,  to  see  the  humor  of  Swift  and 
Sterne  and  Fielding,  after  filtering  through  Richter,  re 
appear  in  Carlyle  with  a  tinge  of  Germanism  that  makes 
it  novel,  alien,  or  even  displeasing,  as  the  case  may  be, 
to  the  English  mind.  Unhappily  the  bit  of  mother  from 
Swift's  vinegar-barrel  has  had  strength  enough  to  sour 
all  the  rest.  The  whimsicality  of  "  Tristram  Shandy," 
which,  even  in  the  original,  has  too  often  the  effect 
of  forethought,  becomes  a  deliberate  artifice  in  Richtcr, 
and  at  last  a  mere  mannerism  in  Carlyle. 

Mr.  Carlyle  in  his  critical  essays  had  the  advantage 
of  a  well-defined  theme,  and  of  limits  both  in  the 
subject  and  in  the  space  allowed  for  its  treatment,  which 
kept  his  natural  extravagance  within  bounds,  and  com 
pelled  some  sort  of  discretion  and  compactness.  The 
great  merit  of  these  essays  lay  in  a  criticism  based  on 
wide  and  various  study,  which,  careless  of  tradition, 
applied  its  standard  to  the  real  and  not  the  coutem- 


CARLYLE.  125 

porary  worth  of  the  literary  or  other  performance  to  be 
judged,  and  in  an  unerring  eye  for  that  fleeting  expres 
sion  of  the  moral  features  of  character,  a  perception  of 
which  alone  makes  the  drawing  of  a  coherent  likeness 
possible.  Their  defect  was  a  tendency,  gaining  strength 
with  years,  to  confound  the  moral  with  the  aesthetic 
standard,  and  to  make  the  value  of  an  author's  work 
dependent  on  the  general  force  of  his  nature  rather 
than  on  its  special  fitness  for  a  given  task.  In  propor 
tion  as  his  humor  gradually  overbalanced  the  other 
qualities  of  his  mind,  his  taste  for  the  eccentric,  amor 
phous,  and  violent  in  men  became  excessive,  disturbing 
more  and  more  his  perception  of  the  more  common 
place  attributes  which  give  consistency  to  portraiture. 
His  "  French  Revolution  "  is  a  series  of  lurid  pictures, 
unmatched  for  vehement  power,  in  which  the  figures 
of  such  sons  of  earth  as  Mirabeau  and  Dantoii  loom 
gigantic  and  terrible  as  in  the  glare  of  an  eruption,  their 
shadows  swaying  far  and  wide  grotesquely  awful.  But 
all  is  painted  by  eruption-flashes  in  violent  light  and 
shade.  There  are  no  half-tints,  no  gradations,  and  we 
find  it  impossible  to  account  for  the  continuance  in 
power  of  less  Titanic  actors  in  the  tragedy  like  Robes 
pierre,  on  any  theory  whether  of  human  nature  or  of 
individual  character  supplied  by  Mr.  Carlyle.  Of  his 
success,  however,  in  accomplishing  what  he  aimed  at, 
which  was  to  haunt  the  mind  with  memories  of  a  horri 
ble  political  nightmare,  there  can  be  no  doubt. 

Goethe  says,  apparently  thinking  of  Richter,  "  The 
worthy  Germans  have  persuaded  themselves  that  the 
essence  of  true  humor  is  formlessness."  Heine  had  not 
yet  shown  that  a  German  might  combine  the  most  airy 
humor  with  a  sense  of  form  as  delicate  as  Goethe's  own, 
and  that  there  was  no  need  to  borrow  the  bow  of  Phi- 
loctetes  for  all  kinds  of  game.  Mr.  Cai'lyle's  own 


126  CARLYLE. 

tendency  was  toward  the  lawless,  and  the  attraction  of 
Jean  Paul  made  it  an  overmastering  one.  Goethe,  we 
think,  might  have  gone  farther,  and  affirmed  that  nothing 
but  the  highest  artistic  sense  can  prevent  humor  from 
degenerating  into  the  grotesque,  and  thence  downwards 
to  utter  anarchy.  Rabelais  is  a  striking  example  of 
it.  The  moral  purpose  of  his  book  cannot  give  it  that 
unity  which  the  instinct  and  forethought  of  art  only 
can  bring  forth.  Perhaps  we  owe  the  masterpiece  of 
humorous  literature  to  the  fact  that  Cervantes  had  been 
trained  to  authorship  in  a  school  where  form  predomi 
nated  over  substance,  and  the  most  convincing  proof  of 
the  supremacy  of  art  at  the  highest  period  of  Greek 
literature  is  to  be  found  in  Aristophanes.  Mr.  Carlyle 
has  no  artistic  sense  of  form  or  rhythm,  scarcely  of 
proportion.  Accordingly  he  looks  on  verse  with  con 
tempt  as  something  barbarous,  —  a  savage  ornament 
which  a  higher  refinement  will  abolish,  as  it  has  tattoo 
ing  and  nose-rings.  With  a  conceptive  imagination 
vigorous  beyond  any  in  his  generation,  with  a  masteiy 
of  language  equalled  only  by  the  greatest  poets,  he  wants 
altogether  the  plastic  imagination,  the  shaping  faculty, 
which  woiild  have  made  him  a  poet  in  the  highest  sense. 
He  is  a  preacher  and  a  prophet,  —  anything  you  will,  - 
but  an  artist  he  is  not,  and  never  can  be.  It  is  always 
the  knots  and  gnarls  of  the  oak  that  he  admires,  never 
the  perfect  and  balanced  tree. 

It  is  certainly  more  agreeable  to  be  grateful  for  what 
we  owe  an  author,  than  to  blame  him  for  what  he  cannot 
give  us.  But  it  is  sometimes  the  business  of  a  critic  to 
trace  faults  of  style  and  of  thought  to  their  root  in  char 
acter  and  temperament,  —  to  show  their  necessary  rela 
tion  to,  and  dependence  on,  each  other, — and  to  find  some 
more  trustworthy  explanation  than  mere  wantonness  of 
will  for  the  moral  obliquities  of  a  man  so  largely  moulded 


CARLYLE.  127 

and  gifted  as  Mr.  Carlyle.  So  long  as  he  was  merely  an 
exhorter  or  dehorter,  we  were  thankful  for  such  elo 
quence,  such  humor,  such  vivid  or  grotesque  images, 
and  such  splendor  of  illustration  as  only  he  could  give ; 
but  when  he  assumes  to  be  a  teacher  of  moral  and  polit 
ical  philosophy,  when  he  himself  takes  to  compounding 
the  social  panaceas  he  has  made  us  laugh  at  so  often, 
and  advertises  none  as  genuine  but  his  own,  we  begin  to 
inquire  into  his  qualifications  and  his  defects,  and  to 
ask  ourselves  whether  his  patent  pill  differs  from  others 
except  in  the  larger  amount  of  aloes,  or  has  any  better 
recommendation  than  the  superior  advertising  powers  of 
a  mountebank  of  genius.  Comparative  criticism  teaches 
us  that  moral  and  aesthetic  defects  are  more  nearly 
related  than  is  commonly  supposed.  Had  Mr.  Carlyle 
been  fitted  out  completely  by  nature  as  an  artist,  he 
would  have  had  an  ideal  in  his  work  which  would  have 
lifted  his  mind  away  from  the  muddier  part  of  him,  and 
trained  him  to  the  habit  of  seeking  and  seeing  the 
harmony  rather  than  the  discord  and  contradiction  of 
things.  His  innate  love  of  the  picturesque,  (which  is 
only  another  form  of  the  sentimentalism  he  so  scoffs  at, 
perhaps  as  feeling  it  a  weakness  in  himself,)  once  turned 
in  the  direction  of  character,  and  finding  its  chief  satis 
faction  there,  led  him  to  look  for  that  ideal  of  human 
nature  in  individual  men  which  is  but  fragmentarily 
represented  in  the  entire  race,  and  is  rather  divined 
from  the  aspiration,  forever  disenchanted  to  be  forever 
renewed,  of  the  immortal  part  in  us,  than  found  in  any 
example  of  actual  achievement.  A  wiser  temper  would 
have  found  something  more  consoling  than  disheartening 
in  the  continual  failure  of  men  eminently  endowed  to 
reach  the  standard  of  this  spiritual  requirement,  would 
perhaps  have  found  in  it  an  inspiring  hint  that  it  is 
mankind,  and  not  special  men,  that  are  to  be  shaped  at 


128  CARLYLE. 

last  into  the  image  of  God,  and  that  the  endless  life  of 
the  generations  may  hope  to  come  nearer  that  goal  of 
which  the  short-breathed  threescore  years  and  ten  fall 
too  unhappily  short. 

But  Mr.  Carlyle  has  invented  the  Hero-cure,  and  all 
who  recommend  any  other  method,  or  see  any  hope  of 
healing  Elsewhere,  are  either  quacks  and  charlatans  or 
their  victims.  His  lively  imagination  conjures  up  the 
image  of  an  impossible  he,  as  contradictorily  endowed 
as  the  chief  personage  in  a  modern  sentimental  novel, 
and  who,  at  all  hazards,  must  not  lead  mankind  like  a 
shepherd,  but  bark,  bite,  and  otherwise  worry  them 
toward  the  fold  like  a  truculent  sheep-dog.  If  Mr. 
Carlyle  would  only  now  and  then  recollect  that  men  are 
men,  and  not  sheep,  —  nay,  that  the  farther  they  are 
from  being  such,  the  m'ore  well  grounded  our  hope  of 
one  day  making  something  better  of  them !  It  is  indeed 
strange  that  one  who  values  Will  so  highly  in  the 
greatest,  should  be  blind  to  its  infinite  worth  in  the  least 
of  men  ;  nay,  that  he  should  so  often  seem  to  confound 
it  with  its  irritable  and  purposeless  counterfeit,  Wilful- 
ness.  The  natural  impatience  of  an  imaginative  tem 
perament,  which  conceives  so  vividly  the  beauty  and 
desirableness  of  a  nobler  manhood  and  a  diviner  political 
order,  makes  him  fret  at  the  slow  moral  processes  by 
which  the  All- Wise  brings  about  his  ends,  and  turns  the 
very  foolishness  of  men  to  his  praise  and  glory.  Mr. 
Carlyle  is  for  calling  down  fire  from  Heaven  whenever 
he  cannot  readily  lay  his  hand  on  the  match-box.  No 
doubt  it  is  somewhat  provoking  that  it  should  be  so  easy 
to  build  castles  in  the  air,  and  so  hard  to  find  tenants 
for  them.  It  is  a  singular  intellectual  phenomenon  to 
see  a  man,  who  earlier  in  life  so  thoroughly  appreciated 
the  innate  weakness  and  futile  tendency  of  the  "  storm 
and  thrust"  period  of  German  literature,  constantly 


CARLYLE.  129 

assimilating,  as  he  grows  older,  more  and  more  nearly  to 
its  principles  and  practice.  It  is  no  longer  the  sagacious 
and  moderate  Goethe  who  is  his  type  of  what  is  highest  in 
human  nature,  but  far  rather  some  Gotz  of  the  Iron  Hand, 
some  assertor  of  the  divine  legitimacy  of  Faustrecht. 
It  is  odd  to  conceive  the  fate  of  Mr.  Carlyle  under  the 
sway  of  any  of  his  heroes,  —  how  Cromwell  would  have 
scorned  him  as  a  babbler  more  long-winded  than  Prynne, 
but  less  clear  and  practical,  —  how  Friedrich  would  have 
scoffed  at  his  tirades  as  dummes  Zeug  not  to  be  compared 
with  the  romances  of  Crebilloii  fils,  or  possibly  have 
clapped  him  in  a  marching  regiment  as  a  fit  subject  for 
the  cane  of  the  sergeant.  Perhaps  something  of  Mr. 
Carlyle's  irritability  is  to  be  laid  to  the  account  of  his 
early  schoolmastership  at  Ecclefechan.  This  great  booby 
World  is  such  a  dull  boy,  and  will  not  learn  the  lesson 
we  have  taken  such  pains  in  expounding  for  the  fiftieth 
time.  Well,  then,  if  eloquence,  if  example,  if  the  awful 
warning  of  other  little  boys  who  neglected  their  acci 
dence  and  came  to  the  gallows,  if  none  of  these  avail,  the 
birch  at  least  is  left,  and  we  will  try  that.  The  dominie 
spirit  has  become  every  year  more  obtrusive  and  in 
tolerant  in  Mr.  Carlyle's  writing,  and  the  rod,  instead  of 
being  kept  in  its  place  as  a  resource  for  desperate  cases, 
has  become  the  alpha  and  omega  of  all  successful  train 
ing,  the  one  divinely-appointed  means  of  human  enlight 
enment  and  progress,  —  in  short,  the  final  hope  of  that 
absurd  animal  who  fancies  himself  a  little  lower  than 
the  angels.  Have  we  feebly  taken  it  for  granted  that 
the  distinction  of  man  was  reason  1  Never  was  there  a 
more  fatal  misconception.  It  is  in  the  gift  of  unreason 
that  we  are  unenviably  distinguished  from  the  brutes, 
whose  nobler  privilege  of  instinct  saves  them  from  our 
blunders  and  our  crimes. 

But  since  Mr.  Carlyle  has  become  possessed  with  the 


130  CARLYLE. 

hallucination  that  he  is  head-master  of  this  huge  boys' 
school  which  we  call  the  world,  his  pedagogic  birch  has 
grown  to  the  taller  proportions  and  more  ominous  as 
pect  of  a  gallows.  His  article-  on  Dr.  Francia  was  a 
panegyric  of  the  halter,  in  which  the  gratitude  of  man 
kind  is  invoked  for  the  self-appointed  dictator  who  had 
discovered  in  Paraguay  a  tree  more  beneficent  than  that 
which  produced  the  Jesuits'  bark.  Mr.  Carlyle  seems  to 
be  in  the  condition  of  a  man  who  uses  stimulants,  and 
must  increase  his  dose  from  day  to  day  as  the  senses 
become  dulled  under  the  spur.  He  began  by  admiring 
strength  of  character  and  purpose,  and  the  manly  self- 
denial  which  makes  a  humble  fortune  great  by  steadfast 
loyalty  to  duty.  He  has  gone  on  till  mere  strength  has 
become  such  washy  weakness  that  there  is  no  longer  any 
titillation  in  it ;  and  nothing  short  of  downright  violence 
will  rouse  his  nerves  now  to  the  needed  excitement.  At 
first  he  made  out  very  well  with  remarkable  men ;  then, 
lessening  the  water  and  increasing  the  spirit,  he  took  to 
Heroes :  and  now  he  must  have  downright  «zhximanity, 
or  the  draught  has  no  savor ;  —  so  he  gets  on  at  last  to 
Kings,  types  of  remorseless  Force,  who  maintain  the 
political  views  of  Berserkers  by  the  legal  principles  of 
Lynch.  Constitutional  monarchy  is  a  failure,  represen 
tative  government  is  a  gabble,  democracy  a  birth  of  the 
bottomless  pit ;  there  is  no  hope  for  mankind  except  in 
getting  themselves  under  a  good  driver  who  shall  not 
spare  the  lash.  And  yet,  unhappily  for  us,  these  drivers 
are  providential  births  not  to  be  contrived  by  any  cun 
ning  of  ours,  and  Friedrich  IT.  is  hitherto  the  last  of 
them.  Meanwhile  the  world's  wheels  have  got  fairly 
stalled  in  mire  and  other  matter  of  every  vilest  consist 
ency  and  most  disgustful  smell.  "What  are  we  to  do  1 
Mr.  Carlyle  will  not  let  us  make  a  lever  with  a  rail  from 
the  next  fence,  or  call  in  the  neighbors.  That  would  be 


CARLYLE.  131 

too  commonplace  and  cowardly,  too  anarchical.  No ; 
he  would  have  us  sit  down  beside  him  in  the  slough,  and 
shout  lustily  for  Hercules.  If  that  indispensable  demi 
god  will  not  or  cannot  come,  we  can  find  a  useful  and 
instructive  solace,  during  the  intervals  of  shouting,  in  a 
hearty  abuse  of  human  nature,  which,  at  the  long  last, 
is  always  to  blame. 

Since  "  Sartor  Resartus "  Mr.  Carlyle  has  done  little 
but  repeat  himself  with  increasing  emphasis  and  height 
ened  shrillness.  Warning  has  steadily  heated  toward 
denunciation,  and  remonstrance  soured  toward  scolding. 
The  image  of  the  Tartar  prayer-mill,  which  he  borrowed 
from  Richter  and  turned  to  such  humorous  purpose, 
might  be  applied  to  himself.  The  same  phrase  comes 
round  and  round,  only  the  machine,  being  a  little  crank 
ier,  rattles  more,  and  the  performer  is  called  on  for  a 
more  visible  exertion.  If  there  be  not  something  very 
like  cant  in  Mr.  Carlyle's  later  writings,  then  cant  is  not 
the  repetition  of  a  creed  after  it  has  become  a  phrase  by 
the  cooling  of  that  white-hot  conviction  which  once  made 
it  both  the  light  and  warmth  of  the  soul.  We  do  not 
mean  intentional  and  deliberate  cant,  but  neither  is  that 
which  Mr.  Carlyle  denounces  so  energetically  in  his  fel 
low-men  of  that  conscious  kind.  We  do  not  mean  to 
blame  him  for  it,  but  mention  it  rather  as  an  interesting 
phenomenon  of  human  nature.  The  stock  of  ideas 
which  mankind  has  to  work  with  is  very  limited,  like  the 
alphabet,  and  can  at  best  have  an  air  of  freshness  given 
it  by  new  arrangements  and  combinations,  or  by  applica 
tion  to  new  times  and  circumstances.  Montaigne  is  but 
Ecclesiastes  writing  in  the  sixteenth  century,  Voltaire 
but  Lucian  in  the  eighteenth.  Yet  both  are  original, 
and  so  certainly  is  Mr.  Carlyle,  whose  borrowing  is 
mainly  from  his  own  former  works.  But  he  does  this  so 
often  and  so  openly,  that  we  may  at  least  be  sure  that 


132  CARLYLE. 

he   ceased  growing  a  number  of  years  ago,  and  is  a 
remarkable  example  of  arrested  development. 

The  cynicism,  however,  which  has  now  become  the 
prevailing  temper  of  his  mind,  has  gone  on  expanding 
with  unhappy  vigor.  In  Mr.  Carlyle  it  is  not,  certainly, 
as  in  Swift,  the  result  of  personal  disappointment,  and 
of  the  fatal  eye  of  an  accomplice  for  the  mean  qualities 
by  which  power  could  be  attained  that  it  might  be  used 
for  purposes  as  mean.  It  seems  rather  the  natural  cor 
ruption  of  his  exuberant  humor.  Humor  in  its  first 
analysis  is  a  perception  of  the  incongruous,  and  in  its 
highest  development,  of  the  incongruity  between  the 
actual  and  the  ideal  in  men  and  life.  With  so  keen 
a  sense -of  the  ludicrous  contrast  between  what  men 
might  be,  nay,  wish  to  be,  and  what  they  are,  and  with 
a  vehement  nature  that  demands  the  instant  realization 
of  his  vision  of  a  world  altogether  heroic,  it  is  no  wonder 
that  Mr.  Carlyle,  always  hoping  for  a  thing  and  always 
disappointed,  should  become  bitter.  Perhaps  if  he 
expected  less  he  would  find  more.  Saul  seeking  his 
father's  asses  found  himself  turned  suddenly  into  a  king ; 
but  Mr.  Carlyle,  on  the  lookout  for  a  king,  always  seems 
to  find  the  other  sort  of  animal.  He  sees  nothing  on 
any  side  of  him  but  a  procession  of  the  Lord  of  Misrule, 
in  gloomier  moments,  a  Dance  of  Death,  where  every 
thing  is  either  a  parody  of  whatever  is  noble,  or  an  aim 
less  jig  that  stumbles  at  last  into  the  annihilation  of  the 
grave,  and  so  passes  from  one  nothing  to  another.  Is  a 
world,  then,  which  buys  and  reads  Mr.  Carlyle's  works 
distinguished  only  for  its  "  fair,  large  ears  "  1  If  he  who 
has  read  and  remembered  so  much  would  only  now  and 
then  call  to  mind  the  old  proverb,  Nee  deus,  nee  lupus, 
sed  homo!  If  he  would  only  recollect  that,  from  the 
days  of  the  first  grandfather,  everybody  has  remembered 
a  golden  age  behind  him  ! 


CARLYLE.  133 

The  very  qualities,  it  seems  to  us,  which  came  so  near 
making  a  great  poet  of  Mr.  Carlyle,  disqualify  him  for 
the  office  of  historian.  The  poet's  concern  is  with  the 
appearances  of  things,  with  their  harmony  in  that  whole 
which  the  imagination  demands  for  its  satisfaction,  and 
their  truth  to  that  ideal  nature  which  is  the  proper 
object  of  poetry.  History,  unfortunately,  is  very  far 
from  being  ideal,  still  farther  from  an  exclusive  interest 
in  those  heroic  or  typical  figures  which  answer  all  the 
wants  of  the  epic  and  the  drama  and  fill  their  utmost 
artistic  limits.  Mr.  Carlyle  has  an  unequalled  power  and 
vividness  in  painting  detached  scenes,  in  bringing  out  in 
their  full  relief  the  oddities  or  peculiarities  of  character ; 
but  he  has  a  far  feebler  sense  of  those  gradual  changes 
of  opinion,  that  strange  communication  of  sympathy 
from  mind  to  mind,  that  subtile  influence  of  very  subor 
dinate  actors  in  giving  a  direction  to  policy  or  action, 
which  we  are  wont  somewhat  vaguely  to  call  the  progress 
of  events.  His  scheme  of  history  is  purely  an  epical  one, 
where  only  leading  figures  appear  by  name  and  are  in  any 
strict  sense  operative.  He  has  no  conception  of  the  peo 
ple  as  anything  else  than  an  element  of  mere  brute 
force  in  political  problems,  and  would  sniff  scornfully  at 
that  unpicturesque  common-sense  of  the  many,  which 
comes  slowly  to  its  conclusions,  no  doubt,  but  compels 
obedience  even  from  rulers  the  most  despotic  when  once 
its  mind  is  made  up.  His  history  of  Frederick  is,  of 
course,  a  Fritziad ;  but  next  to  his  hero,  the  cane  of  the 
drill-sergeant  and  iron  ramrods  appear  to  be  the  condi 
tions  which  to  his  mind  satisfactorily  account  for  the 
result  of  the  Seven  Years  War.  It  is  our  opinion,  which 
subsequent  events  seem  to  justify,  that,  had  there  not 
been  in  the  Prussian  people  a  strong  instinct  of  nation 
ality,  Protestant  nationality  too,  and  an  intimate  convic 
tion  of  its  advantages,  the  war  might  have  ended  quite 


134  CAELYLE. 

otherwise.  Frederick  II.  left  the  machine  of  war  which 
he  received  from  his  father  even  more  perfect  than  he 
found  it,  yet  within  a  few  years  of  his  death  it  went  to 
pieces  before  the  shock  of  French  armies  animated  by  an 
idea.  Again  a  few  years,  and  the  Prussian  soldiery,  in 
spired  once  more  by  the  old  national  fervor,  were  victori 
ous.  Were  it  not  for  the  purely  picturesque  bias  of 
Mr.  Carlyle's  genius,  for  the  necessity  which  his  epical 
treatment  lays  upon  him  of  always  having  a  protagonist, 
we  should  be  astonished  that  an  idealist  like  him  should 
have  so  little  faith  in  ideas  and  so  much  in  matter. 

Mr.  Carlyle's  manner  is  not  so  well  suited  to  the  histo 
rian  as  to  the  essayist.  He  is  always  great  in  single 
figures  and  striking  episodes,  but  there  is  neither  grada 
tion  nor  continuity.  He  has  extraordinary  patience  and 
conscientiousness  in  the  gathering  and  sifting  of  his 
material,  but  is  scornful  of  commonplace  facts  and  char 
acters,  impatient  of  whatever  will  not  serve  for  one  of  his 
clever  sketches,  or  group  well  in  a  more  elaborate  figure- 
piece.  He  sees  history,  as  it  were,  by  flashes  of  light 
ning.  A  single  scene,  whether  a  landscape  or  an  inte 
rior,  a  single  figure  or  a  wild  mob  of  men,  whatever  may 
be  snatched  by  the  eye  in  that  instant  of  intense  illumi 
nation,  is  minutely  photographed  upon  the  memory. 
Every  tree  and  stone,  almost  every  blade  of  grass ;  every 
article  of  furniture  in  a  room ;  the  attitude  or  expression, 
nay,  the  very  buttons  and  shoe-ties  of  a  principal  figure ; 
the  gestures  of  momentary  passion  in  a  wild  throng,  — 
everything  leaps  into  vision  under  that  sudden  glare 
with  a  painful  distinctness  that  leaves  the  retina  quiver 
ing.  The  intervals  are  absolute  darkness.  Mr.  Carlyle 
makes  us  acquainted  with  the  isolated  spot  where  we 
happen  to  be  when  the  flash  comes,  as  if  by  actual  eye 
sight,  but  there  is  no  possibility  of  a  comprehensive 
view.  No  other  writer  compares  with  him  for  vividness. 


CAELYLE.  135 

He  is  himself  a  witness,  and  makes  us  witnesses  of  what 
ever  he  describes.  This  is  genius  beyond  a  question, 
and  of  a  very  rare  quality,  but  it  is  not  history.  He 
has  not  the  cold-blooded  impartiality  of  the  historian  • 
and  while  he  entertains  us,  moves  us  to  tears  or  laughter, 
makes  us  the  unconscious  captives  of  his  ever-changeful 
mood,  we  find  that  he  has  taught  us  comparatively  little. 
His  imagination  is  so  powerful  that  it  makes  him  the 
contemporary  of  his  characters,  and  thus  his  history 
seems  to  be  the  memoirs  of  a  cynical  humorist,  with 
hearty  likes  and  dislikes,  with  something  of  acridity  in 
his  partialities  whether  for  or  against,  more  keenly  sen 
sitive  to  the  grotesque  than  the  simply  natural,  and  who 
enters  in  his  diary,  even  of  what  comes  within  the  range 
of  his  own  observation,  only  so  much  as  amuses  his 
fancy,  is  congenial  with  his  humor,  or  feeds  his  prejudice. 
Mr.  Carlyle's  method  is  accordingly  altogether  picto 
rial,  his  hasty  temper  making  narrative  wearisome  to 
him.  In  his  Friedrich,  for  example,  we  get  very  little 
notion  of  the  civil  administration  of  Prussia ;  and  when 
he  comes,  in  the  last  volume,  to  his  hero's  dealings  with 
civil  reforms,  he  confesses  candidly  that  it  would  tire  him 
too  much  to  tell  us  about  it,  even  if  he  knew  anything 
at  all  satisfactory  himself. 

Mr.  Carlyle's  historical  compositions  are  wonderful 
prose  poems,  full  of  picture,  incident,  humor,  and  char 
acter,  where  we  grow  familiar  with  his  conception  of 
certain  leading  personages,  and  even  of  subordinate  ones, 
if  they  are  necessary  to  the  scene,  so  that  they  come  out 
living  upon  the  stage  from  the  dreary  limbo  of  names ; 
but  this  is  no  more  history  than  the  historical  plays  of 
Shakespeare.  There  is  nothing  in  imaginative  literature 
superior  in  its  own  way  to  the  episode  of  Voltaire  in  the 
Fritziad.  It  is  delicious  in  humor,  masterly  in  minute 
characterization.  We  feel  as  if  the  principal  victim  (for 


136  CARLYLE. 

we  cannot  help  feeling  all  the  while  that  he  is  so)  of  this 
mischievous  genius  had  been  put  upon  the  theatre  before 
us  by  some  perfect  mimic  like  Foote,  who  had  studied 
his  habitual  gait,  gestures,  tones,  turn  of  thought, 
costume,  trick  of  feature,  and  rendered  them  with  the 
slight  dash  of  caricature  needful  to  make  the  whole 
composition  tell.  It  is  in  such  things  that  Mr.  Carlyle 
is  beyond  all  rivalry,  and  that  we  must  go  back  to  Shake 
speare  for  a  comparison.  But  the  mastery  of  Shake 
speare  is  shown  perhaps  more  strikingly  in  his  treatment 
of  the  ordinary  than  of  the  exceptional.  His  is  the 
gracious  equality  of  Nature  herself.  Mr.  Carlyle's  gift 
is  rather  in  the  representation  than  in  the  evolution  of 
character ;  and  it  is  a  necessity  of  his  art,  therefore,  to 
exaggerate  slightly  his  heroic,  and  to  caricature  in  like 
manner  his  comic  parts.  His  appreciation  is  less  psy 
chological  than  physical  and  external.  Grimm  relates 
that  Garrick,  riding  once  with  Preville,  proposed  to  him 
that  they  should  counterfeit  drunkenness.  They  rode 
through  Passy  accordingly,  deceiving  all  who  saw  them. 
When  beyond  the  town  Preville  asked  how  he  had  suc 
ceeded.  "Excellently,"  said  Garrick,  "as  to  your  body; 
but  your  legs  were  not  tipsy."  Mr.  Carlyle  would  be  as 
exact  in  his  observation  of  nature  as  the  great  actor,  and 
would  make  us  see  a  drunken  man  as  well ;  but  we 
doubt  whether  he  could  have  conceived  that  unmatch- 
able  scene  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  where  the  tipsiness 
of  Lepidus'  pervades  the  whole  metaphysical  no  less 
than  the  physical  part  of  the  triumvir.  If  his  sym 
pathies  bore  any  proportion  to  his  instinct  for  catching 
those  traits  which  are  the  expression  of  character,  but 
not  character  itself,  we  might  have  had  a  great  historian 
in  him  instead  of  a  history-painter.  But  that  which  is 
a  main  element  in  Mr.  Carlyle's  talent,  and  does  perhaps 
more  than  anything  else  to  make  it  effective,  is  a  defect 


CARLYLE.  137 

of  his  nature.  The  cynicism  which  renders  him  so  en 
tertaining  pi*ecludes  him  from  any  just  conception  of 
men  and  their  motives,  and  from  any  sane  estimate  of 
the  relative  importance  of  the  events  which  concern 
them.  We  remember  a  picture  of  Hamon's,  where  be 
fore  a  Punch's  theatre  are  gathered  the  wisest  of  man 
kind  in  rapt  attention.  Socrates  sits  on  a  front  bench, 
absorbed  in  the  spectacle,  and  in  the  corner  stands  Dante 
making  entries  in  his  note-book.  Mr.  Carlyle  as  an 
historian  leaves  us  in  somewhat  such  a  mood.  The 
world  is  a  puppet-show,  and  when  we  have  watched  the 
play  out,  we  depart  with  a  half-comic  consciousness  of 
the  futility  of  all  human  enterprise,  and  the  ludicrous- 
ness  of  all  man's  action  and  passion  on  the  stage  of  the 
world.  Simple,  kindly,  blundering  Oliver  Goldsmith 
was  after  all  wiser,  and  his  Vicar,  ideal  as  Hector  and 
not  less  immortal,  is  a  demonstration  of  the  perennial 
beauty  and  heroism  of  the  homeliest  human  nature. 
The  cynical  view  is  congenial  to  certain  moods,  and  is  so 
little  inconsistent  with  original  nobleness  of  mind,  that 
it  is  not  seldom  the  acetous  fermentation  of  it ;  but  it 
is  the  view  of  the  satirist,  not  of  the  historian,  and  takes 
in  but  a  narrow  arc  in  the  circumference  of  truth. 
Cynicism  in  itself  is  essentially  disagreeable.  It  is  the 
intellectual  analogue  of  the  truffle ;  and  though  it  may 
be  very  well  in  giving  a  relish  to  thought  for  certain 
palates,  it  cannot  supply  the  substance  of  it.  Mr.  Car- 
lyle's  cynicism  is  not  that  polished  weariness  of  the  out- 
sides  of  life  which  we  find  in  Ecclesiastes.  It  goes  much 
deeper  than  that  to  the  satisfactions,  not  of  the  body  or 
the  intellect,  but  of  the  very  soul  itself.  It  vaunts 
itself ;  it  is  noisy  and  aggressive.  What  the  wise  master 
puts  into  the  mouth  of  desperate  ambition,  thwarted  of 
the  fruit  of  its  crime,  as  the  fitting  expression  of  pas 
sionate  sophistry,  seems  to  have  become  an  article  of  his 
creed.  With  him 


138  CARLYLE. 

"  Life  w  a  tale 

Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing." 

He  goes  about  with  his  Diogenes  dark-lantern,  professing 
to  seek  a  man,  but  inwardly  resolved  to  find  a  monkey. 
He  loves  to  flash  it  suddenly  on  poor  human  nature  in 
some  ridiculous  or  degrading  posture.  He  admires  still, 
or  keeps  affirming  that  he  admires,  the  doughty,  silent, 
hard-working  men  who,  like  Cromwell,  go  honestly  about 
their  business ;  but  when  we  come  to  his  later  examples, 
we  find  that  it  is  not  loyalty  to  duty  or  to  an  inward 
ideal  of  high-mindedness  that  he  finds  admirable  in 
them,  but  a  blind  unquestioning  vassalage  to  whomso 
ever  it  has  pleased  him  to  set  up  for  a  hero.  He  would 
fain  replace  the  old  feudalism  with  a  spiritual  counter 
part,  in  which  there  shall  be  an  obligation  to  soul-service. 
He  who  once  popularized  the  word  flunkey  by  ringing 
the  vehement  changes  of  his  scorn  upon  it,  is  at  last 
forced  to  conceive  an  ideal  flunkeyism  to  squire  the 
hectoring  Don  Belianises  of  his  fancy  about  the  world. 
Failing  this,  his  latest  theory  of  Divine  government 
seems  to  be  the  cudgel.  Poets  have  sung  all  manner  of 
vegetable  loves ;  Petrarch  has  celebrated  the  laurel, 
Chaucer  the  daisy,  and  Wordsworth  the  gallows-tree  ;  it 
remained  for  the  ex-pedagogue  of  Ecclefechan  to  become 
the  volunteer  laureate  of  the  rod,  and  to  imagine  a 
world  created  and  directed  by  a  divine  Dr.  Busby.  We 
cannot  help  thinking  that  Mr.  Carlyle  might  have 
learned  something  to  his  advantage  by  living  a  few  years 
in  the  democracy  which  he  scoffs  at  as  heartily  a  priori 
as  if  it  were  the  demagogism  which  Aristophanes  derided 
from  experience.  The  Hero,  as  Mr.  Carlyle  understands 
him,  was  a  makeshift  of  the  past ;  and  the  ideal  of  man 
hood  is  to  be  found  hereafter  in  free  communities,  where 
the  state  shall  at  length  sum  up  and  exemplify  in  itself 


CARLYLE.  139 

all  those  qualities  which  poets  were  forced  to  imagine 
and  typify  because  they  could  not  find  them  in  the 
actual  world. 

In  the  earlier  part  of  his  literary  career,  Mr.  Carlyle 
was  the  denouncer  of  shams,  the  preacher  up  of  sincer 
ity,  manliness,  and  of  a  living  faith,  instead  of  a  dron 
ing  ritual.  He  had  intense  convictions,  and  he  made 
disciples.  With  a  compass  of  diction  unequalled  by  any 
other  public  performer  of  the  time,  ranging  as  it  did 
from  the  unbooked  freshness  of  the  Scottish  peasant  to 
the  most  far-sought  phrase  of  literary  curiosity,  with 
humor,  pathos,  and  eloquence  at  will,  it  was  no  wonder 
that  he  found  eager  listeners  in  a  world  longing  for  a 
sensation,  and  forced  to  put  up  with  the  West-End 
gospel  of  "  Pelham."  If  not  a  profound  thinker,  he  had 
what  was  next  best,  —  he  felt  profoundly,  and  his  cry 
came  out  of  the  depths.  The  stern  Calvinism  of  his 
early  training  was  rekindled  by  his  imagination  to  the 
old  fervor  of  Wishart  and  Brown,  and  became  a  new 
phenomenon  as  he  reproduced  it  subtilized  by  German 
transcendentalism  and  German  culture.  Imagination, 
if  it  lays  hold  of  a  Scotchman,  possesses  him  in  the  old 
demoniac  sense  of  the  word,  and  that  hard  logical 
nature,  if  the  Hebrew  fire  once  gets  fair  headway  in  it, 
burns  unquenchable  as  an  anthracite  coal-mine.  But  to 
utilize  these  sacred  heats,  to  employ  them,  as  a  literary 
man  is  always  tempted,  to  keep  the  domestic  pot  a-boil 
ing,  —  is  such  a  thing  possible  1  Only  too  possible,  we 
fear ;  and  Mr.  Carlyle  is  an  example  of  it.  If  the  lan 
guid  public  long  for  a  sensation,  the  excitement  of 
making  one  becomes  also  a  necessity  of  the  successful 
author,  as  the  intellectual  nerves  grow  duller  and  the 
old  inspiration  that  came  unbidden  to  the  bare  garret 
grows  shier  and  shier  of  the  comfortable  parlor.  As  he 
himself  said  thirty  years  ago  of  Edward  Irving,  "  Un- 


140  CAELYLE. 

consciously,  for  the  most  part  in  deep  unconsciousness, 
there  was  now  the  impossibility  to  live  neglected,  —  to 
walk  on  the  quiet  paths  where  alone  it  is  well  with  us. 
Singularity  must  henceforth  succeed  singularity.  O 
foulest  Circean  draught,  thou  poison  of  Popular  Ap 
plause  !  madness  is  in  thee  and  death ;  thy  end  is 
Bedlam  and  the  grave."  Mr.  Carlyle  won  his  first  suc 
cesses  as  a  kind  of  preacher  in  print.  His  fervor,  his 
oddity  of  manner,  his  pugnacious  paradox,  drew  the 
crowd  ;  the  truth,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  faith  that  under 
lay  them  all,  brought  also  the  fitter  audience,  though 
fewer.  But  the  curse  was  upon  him ;  he  must  attract, 
he  must  astonish.  Thenceforth  he  has  done  nothing 
but  revamp  his  telling  things ;  but  the  oddity  has  be 
come  always  odder,  the  paradoxes  more  paradoxical. 
No  very  large  share  of  truth  falls  to  the  apprehension 
of  any  one  man ;  let  him  keep  it  sacred,  and  beware  of 
repeating  it  till  it  turn  to  falsehood  on  his  lips  by  be^ 
coming  ritual.  Truth  always  has  a  bewitching  savor  of 
newness  in  it,  and  novelty  at  the  first  taste  recalls  that 
original  sweetness  to  the  tongue ;  but  alas  for  him  who 
would  make  the  one  a  substitute  for  the  other !  Wo 
seem  to  miss  of  late  in  Mr.  Carlyle  the  old  sincerity. 
He  has  become  the  purely  literary  man,  less  concerned 
about  what  he  says  than  about  how  he  shall  say  it  to 
best  advantage.  The  Muse  should  be  the  companion, 
not  the  guide,  says  he  whom  Mr.  Carlyle  has  pronounced 
"the  wisest  of  this  generation."  What  would  be  a 
virtue  in  the  poet  is  a  vice  of  the  most  fatal  kind  in  the 
teacher,  and,  alas  that  we  should  say  it !  the  very  Draco 
of  shams,  whose  code  contained  no  penalty  milder  than 
capital  for  the  most  harmless  of  them,  has  become  at 
last  something  very  like  a  sham  himself.  Mr.  Carlyle 
continues  to  be  a  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness,  but  no 
longer  a  voice  with  any  earnest  conviction  behind  it. 


CABLYLE.  141 

Hearing  him  rebuke  us  for  being  humbugs  and  impos 
tors,  we  are  inclined  to  answer,  with  the  ambassador  of 
Philip  II.,  when  his  master  reproached  him  with  for 
getting  substance  in  ceremony,  "  Your  Majesty  forgets 
that  you  are  only  a  ceremony  yourself."  And  Mr.  Car- 
lyle's  teaching,  moreover,  —  if  teaching  we  may  call  it, 
—  belongs  to  what  the  great  German,  whose  disciple  he 
is,  condemned  as  the  "literature  of  despair."  An  apostle 
to  the  gentiles  might  hope  for  some  fruit  of  his  preach 
ing;  but  of  what  avail  an  apostle  who  shouts  his 
message  down  the  mouth  of  the  pit  to  poor  lost  souls, 
whom  he  can  positively  assure  only  that  it  is  impossible 
to  get  out  1  Mr.  Carlyle  lights  up  the  lanterns  of  his 
Pharos  after  the  ship  is  already  rolling  between  the 
tongue  of  the  sea  and  the  grinders  of  the  reef.  It  is 
very  brilliant,  and  its  revolving  flashes  touch  the  crests 
of  the  breakers  with  an  awful  picturesqueness  ;  but  in 
so  desperate  a  state  of  things,  even  Dr.  Syntax  might 
be  pardoned  for  being  forgetful  of  the  picturesque.  The 
Toryism  of  Scott  sprang  from  love  of  the  past ;  that  of 
Carlyle  is  far  more  dangerously  infectious,  for  it  is  logi 
cally  deduced  from  a  deep  disdain  of  human  nature. 

Browning  has  drawn  a  beautiful  picture  of  an  old  king 
sitting  at  the  gate  of  his  palace  to  judge  his  people  in 
the  calm  sunshine  of  that  past  which  never  existed  out 
side  a  poet's  brain.  It  is  the  sweetest  of  waking  dreams, 
this  of  absolute  power  and  perfect  wisdom  in  one  su 
preme  ruler;  but  it  is  as  pure  a  creation  of  human 
want  and  weakness,  as  clear  a  witness  of  mortal  limita 
tion  and  incompleteness,  as  the  shoes  of  swiftness,  the 
cloak  of  darkness,  the  purse  of  Fortunatus,  and  the 
elixir  vitce.  It  is  the  natural  refuge  of  imaginative  tem 
peraments  impatient  of  our  blunders  and  shortcomings, 
and,  given  a  complete  man,  all  would  submit  to  the 
divine  right  of  his  despotism.  But  alas  !  to  every  the 


142  CARLYLE. 

most  fortunate  human  birth  hobbles  up  that  malign  fairy 
who  has  been  forgotten,  with  her  fatal  gift  of  imperfec 
tion  !  So  far  as  our  experience  has  gone,  it  has  been  the 
very  opposite  of  Mr.  Carlyle's.  Instead  of  finding  men 
disloyal  to  their  natural  leader,  nothing  has  ever  seemed 
to  us  so  touching  as  the  gladness  with  which  they  follow 
him,  when  they  are  sure  they  have  found  him  at  last. 
But  a  natural  leader  of  the  ideal  type  is  not  to  be  looked 
for  nisi  dignus  vindice  nodus.  The  Divine  Forethought 
had  been  cruel  in  furnishing  one  for  every  petty  occa 
sion,  and  thus  thwarting  in  all  inferior  men  that  price 
less  gift  of  reason,  to  develop  which,  and  to  make  it  one 
with  free-will,  is  the  highest  use  of  our  experience  on 
earth.  Mr.  Carlyle  was  hard  bestead  and  very  far  gone 
in  his  idolatry  of  mere  pluck,  when  he  was  driven  to 
choose  Friedrich  as  a  hero.  A  poet  —  and  Mr.  Carlyle 
is  nothing  else  —  is  unwise  who  yokes  Pegasus  to  a  pro 
saic  theme  which  no  force  of  wing  can  lift  from  the  dull 
earth.  Charlemagne  would  have  been  a  wiser  choice, 
far  enough  in  the  past  for  ideal  treatment,  more  mani 
festly  the  Siegfried  of  Anarchy,  and  in  his  rude  way  the 
refounder  of  that  empire  which  is  the  ideal  of  despotism 
in  the  Western  world. 

Friedrich  was  doubtless  a  remarkable  man,  but  surely 
very  far  below  any  lofty  standard  of  heroic  greatness. 
He  was  the  last  of  the  European  kings  who  could  look 
upon  his  kingdom  as  his  private  patrimony ;  and  it  was 
this  estate  of  his,  this  piece  of  property,  which  he  so 
obstinately  and  successfully  defended.  He  had  no  idea 
of  country  as  it  was  understood  by  an  ancient  Greek  or 
Roman,  as  it  is  understood  by  a  modern  Englishman  or 
American ;  and  there  is  something  almost  pitiful  in  see 
ing  a  man  of  genius  like  Mr.  Carlyle  fighting  painfully 
over  again  those  battles  of  the  last  century  which  settled 
nothing  but  the  continuance  of  the  Prussian  monarchy, 


CARLYLE.  143 

•while  he  saw  only  the  "  burning  of  a  dirty  chimney  "  in 
the  war  which  a  great  people  was  waging  under  his  very 
eyes  for  the  idea  of  nationality  and  orderly  magistrature, 
and  which  fixed,  let  us  hope  forever,  a  boundary-line  on 
the  map  of  history  and  man's  advancement  toward  self- 
conscious  and  responsible  freedom.  The  true  historical 
genius,  to  our  thinking,  is  that  which  can  see  the  nobler 
meaning  of  events  that  are  near  him,  as  the  true  poet  is 
he  who  detects  the  divine  in  the  casual ;  and  we  some 
what  suspect  the  depth  of  his  insight  into  the  past,  who 
cannot  recognize  the  godlike  of  to-day  xmder  that  dis 
guise  in  which  it  always  visits  us.  Shall  we  hint  to  Mr. 
Carlyle  that  a  man  may  look  on  an  heroic  age,  as  well  as 
an  heroic  master,  with  the  eyes  of  a  valet,  as  misappre- 
ciative  certainly,  though  not  so  ignoble  1 

What  Goethe  says  of  a  great  poet,  that  he  must  be  a 
citizen  of  his  age  as  well  as  of  his  country,  may  be  said 
inversely  of  a  great  king.  He  should  be  a  citizen  of  his 
country  as  well  as  of  his  age.  Friedrich  was  certainly 
the  latter  in  its  fullest  sense ;  whether  he  was,  or  could 
have  been,  the  former,  in  any  sense,  may  be  doubted. 
The  man  who  spoke  and  wrote  French  in  preference 
to  his  mother-tongue,  who,  dying  when  Goethe  was 
already  drawing  toward  his  fortieth  year,  Schiller  toward 
his  thirtieth,  and  Lessing  had  been  already  five  years  in 
his  grave,  could  yet  see  nothing  but  barbarism  in  Ger 
man  literature,  had  little  of  the  old  Teutonic  fibre  in  his 
nature.  The  man  who  pronounced  the  Nibelungen  Lied 
not  worth  a  pinch  of  priming,  had  little  conception  of 
the  power  of  heroic  traditions  in  making  heroic  men,  and 
especially  in  strengthening  that  instinct  made  up  of  so 
many  indistinguishable  associations  which  we  call  love 
of  country.  Charlemagne,  when  he  caused  the  old  songs 
of  his  people  to  be  gathered  and  written  down,  showed  a 
truer  sense  of  the  sources  of  national  feeling  and  a 


144  CARLYLE. 

deeper  political  insight.  This  want  of  sympathy  points 
to  the  somewhat  narrow  limits  of  Friedrich's  nature. 
In  spite  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  adroit  statement  of  the  case, 
and  the  whole  book  has  an  air  of  being  the  plea  of 
a  masterly  advocate  in  mitigation  of  sentence,  we  feel 
that  his  hero  was  essentially  hard,  narrow,  and  selfish. 
His  popularity  will  go  for  little  with  any  one  who  has 
studied  the  trifling  and  often  fabulous  elements  that 
make  up  that  singular  compound.  A  bluntness  of  speech, 
a  shabby  uniform,  a  frugal  camp  equipage,  a  timely 
familiarity,  may  make  a  man  the  favorite  of  an  army  or 
a  nation,  —  above  all,  if  he  have  the  knack  of  success. 
Moreover,  popularity  is  much  more  easily  won  from 
above  downward,  and  is  bought  at  a  better  bargain  by 
kings  and  generals  than  by  other  men.  We  doubt  if 
Friedrich  would  have  been  liked  as  a  private  person,  or 
even  as  an  unsuccessful  king.  He  apparently  attached 
very  few  people  to  himself,  fewer  even  than  his  brutal 
old  Squire  Western  of  a  father.  His  sister  Wilhelmina 
is  perhaps  an  exception.  We  say  perhaps,  for  we  do  not 
know  how  much  the  heroic  part  he  was  called  on  to 
play  had  to  do  with  the  matter,  and  whether  sisterly 
pride  did  not  pass  even  with  herself  for  sisterly  affection. 
Moreover  she  was  far  from  him ;  and  Mr.  Carlyle  waves 
aside,  in  his  generous  fashion,  some  rather  keen  com 
ments  of  hers  on  her  brother's  character  when  she  visited 
Berlin  after  he  had  become  king.  Indeed,  he  is  apt 
to  deal  rather  contemptuously  with  all  adverse  criticism 
of  his  hero.  We  sympathize  with  his  impulse  in  this  re 
spect,  agreeing  heartily  as  we  do  in  Chaucer's  scorn  of 
those  who  "  gladlie  demen  to  the  baser  end  "  in  such 
matters.  But  we  are  not  quite  sure  if  this  be  a  safe 
method  with  the  historian.  He  must  doubtless  be  the 
friend  of  his  hero  if  he  would  understand  him,  but  he 
must  be  more  the  friend  of  truth  if  he  would  understand 


CAKLYLE.  145 

history.  Mr.  Carlyle's  passion  for  truth  is  intense, 
as  befits  his  temper,  but  it  is  that  of  a  lover  for  his 
mistress.  He  would  have  her  all  to  himself,  and  has 
a  lover's  conviction  that  no  one  is  able,  or  even  fit,  to 
appreciate  her  but  himself.  He  does  well  to  despise  the 
tittle-tattle  of  vulgar  minds,  but  surely  should  not  ig 
nore  all  testimony  on  the  other  side.  For  ourselves,  we 
think  it  not  unimportant  that  Goethe's  friend  Knebel,  a 
man  not  incapable  of  admiration,  and  who  had  served  a 
dozen  years  or  so  as  an  officer  of  Friedrich's  guard, 
should  have  bluntly  called  him  "  the  tyrant." 

Mr.  Carlyle's  history  traces  the  family  of  his  hero 
down  from  its  beginnings  in  the  picturesque  chiaro-scuro 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was  an  able  and  above  all  a 
canny  house,  a  Scotch  version  of  the  word  able,  which 
implies  thrift  and  an  eye  to  the  main  chance,  the  said 
main  chance  or  chief  end  of  man  being  altogether  of 
this  world.  Friedrich,  inheriting  this  family  faculty  in 
full  measure,  was  driven,  partly  by  ambition,  partly  by 
necessity,  to  apply  it  to  war.  He  did  so,  with  the 
success  to  be  expected  where  a  man  of  many  expedients 
has  the  good  luck  to  be  opposed  by  men  with  few.  He 
adds  another  to  the  many  proofs  that  it  is  possible  to  be 
a  great  general  without  a  spark  of  that  divine  fire  which 
we  call  genius,  and  that  good  fortune  in  war  results  from 
the  same  prompt  talent  and  unbending  temper  which 
lead  to  the  same  result  in  the  peaceful  professions. 
Friedrich  had  certainly  more  of  the  temperament  of 
genius  than  Marlborough  or  Wellington  ;  but  not  to  go 
beyond  modern  instances,  he  does  not  impress  us  with 
the  massive  breadth  of  Napoleon,  nor  attract  us  with 
the  climbing  ardor  of  Turenne.  To  compare  him  with 
Alexander  or  Ca3sar  were  absurd.  The  kingship  that 
was  in  him,  and  which  won  Mr.  Carlyle  to  be  his  biogra 
pher,  is  that  of  will  merely,  of  rapid  and  relentless 
7  J 


146  CARLYLE. 

command.  For  organization  he  had  a  masterly  talent ; 
but  he  could  not  apply  it  to  the  arts  of  peace,  both  be 
cause  he  wanted  experience  and  because  the  rash  decision 
of  the  battle-field  will  not  serve  in  matters  which  are 
governed  by  natural  laws  of  growth.  He  seems,  indeed, 
to  have  had  a  coarse,  soldier's  contempt  for  all  civil  dis 
tinction,  altogether  unworthy  of  a  wise  king,  or  even 
of  a  prudent  one.  He  confers  the  title  of  Hofrath  on 
the  husband  of  a  woman  with  whom  his  General  Wai- 
rave  is  living  in  what  Mr.  Carlyle  justly  calls  "  brutish 
polygamy,"  and  this  at  Walrave's  request,  on  the  ground 
that  "  a  general's  drab  ought  to  have  a  handle  to  her 
i;ame."  Mr.  Carlyle  murmurs  in  a  mild  parenthesis  that 
"  we  rather  regret  this  "  !  (Vol.  III.  p.  559.)  This  is 
his  usual  way  of  treating  unpleasant  matters,  sidling  by 
with  a  deprecating  shrug  of  the  shoulders.  Not  that 
he  ever  wilfully  suppresses  anything.  On  the  contrary, 
there  is  no  greater  proof  of  his  genius  than  the  way  in 
which,  while  he  seems  to  paint  a  character  with  all  its 
disagreeable  traits,  he  contrives  to  win  our  sympathy  for 
it,  nay,  almost  our  liking.  This  is  conspicuously  true 
of  his  portrait  of  Friedrich's  father ;  and  that  he  does 
not  succeed  in  making  Friedrich  himself  attractive  is  a 
strong  argument  with  us  that  the  fault  is  in  the  subject 
and  not  the  artist. 

The  book,  we  believe,  has  been  comparatively  unsuc 
cessful  as  a  literary  venture.  Nor  do  we  wonder  at  it. 
It  is  disproportionately  long,  and  too  much  made  up  of 
those  descriptions  of  battles  to  read  which  seems  even 
more  difficult  than  to  have  won  the  victory  itself,  more 
disheartening  than  to  have  suffered  the  defeat.  To  an 
American,  also,  the  warfare  seemed  Liliputian  in  the 
presence  of  a  conflict  so  much  larger  in  its  proportions 
and  significant  in  its  results.  The  interest,  moreover, 
flags  decidedly  toward  the  close,  where  the  reader  cannot 


CARLYLE.  147 

help  feeling  that  the  author  loses  breath  somewhat  pain 
fully  under  the  effort  of  so  prolonged  a  course.  Mr. 
Carlyle  has  evidently  devoted  to  his  task  a  labor  that 
may  be  justly  called  prodigious.  Not  only  has  he  sifted 
all  the  German  histories  and  memoirs,  but  has  visited 
every  battle-field,  and  describes  them  with  an  eye  for 
country  that  is  without  rival  among  historians.  The 
book  is  evidently  an  abridgment  of  even  more  abundant 
collections,  and  yet  as  it  stands  the  matter  overburdens 
the  work.  It  is  a  bundle  of  lively  episodes  rather  than 
a  continuous  narrative.  In  this  respect  it  contrasts 
oddly  with  the  concinnity  of  his  own  earlier  Life  of 
Schiller.  But  the  episodes  are  lively,  the  humor  and 
pathos  spring  from  a  profound  nature,  the  sketches  of 
character  are  masterly,  the  seizure  of  every  picturesque 
incident  infallible,  and  the  literary  judgments  those  of  a 
thorough  scholar  and  critic.  There  is,  of  course,  the 
usual  amusing  objurgation  of  Dryasdust  and  his  rubbish- 
heaps,  the  usual  assumption  of  omniscience,  and  the 
usual  certainty  of  the  lively  French  lady  of  being  al 
ways  in  the  right ;  yet  we  cannot  help  thinking  that  a 
little  of  Dryasdust's  plodding  exactness  would  have  saved 
Fouquet  eleven  years  of  the  imprisonment  to  which  Mr. 
Carlyle  condemns  him,  would  have  referred  us  to  St. 
Simon  rather  than  to  Voltaire  for  the  character  of  the* 
brothers  Belle-He,  and  would  have  kept  clear  of  a 
certain  ludicrous  etymology  of  the  name  Antwerp,  not 
to  mention  some  other  trifling  slips  of  the  like  nature. 
In  conclusion,  after  saying,  as  honest  critics  must,  that 
"The  History  of  Friedrich  II.  called  Frederick  the 
Great "  is  a  book  to  be  read  in  with  more  satisfaction 
than  to  be  read  through,  after  declaring  that  it  is  open 
to  all  manner  of  criticism,  especially  in  point  of  moral 
purpose  and  tendency,  we  must  admit  with  thankful 
ness,  that  it  has  the  one  prime  merit  of  being  the  work 


148  CARLYLE. 

of  a  man  who  has  every  quality  of  a  great  poet  except 
that  supreme  one  of  rhythm  which  shapes  both  matter 
and  manner  to  harmonious  proportion,  and  that  where 
it  is  good,  it  is  good  as  only  genius  knows  how  to  be. 

With  the  gift  of  song,  Carlyle  would  have  been  the 
greatest  of  epic  poets  since  Homer.  Without  it,  to 
modulate  and  harmonize  and  bring  parts  into  their 
proper  relation,  he  is  the  most  amorphous  of  humorists, 
the  most  shining  avatar  of  whim  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
Beginning  with  a  hearty  contempt  for  shams,  he  has 
come  at  length  to  believe  in  brute  force  as  the  only 
reality,  and  has  as  little  sense  of  justice  as  Thackeray 
allowed  to  women.  We  say  brute  force  because,  though 
the  theory  is  that  this  force  should  be  directed  by  the 
supreme  intellect  for  the  time  being,  yet  all  inferior  wits 
are  treated  rather  as  obstacles  to  be  contemptuously 
shoved  aside  than  as  ancillary  forces  to  be  conciliated 
through  their  reason.  But,  with  all  deductions,  he  re 
mains  the  profoundest  critic  and  the  most  dramatic  imagi 
nation  of  modern  times.  Never  was  there  a  more  striking 
example  of  that  ingenium  perfervidum  long  ago  said  to  be 
characteristic  of  his  countrymen.  His  is  one  of  the 
natures,  rare  in  these  latter  centuries,  capable  of  rising 
to  a  white  heat ;  but  once  fairly  kindled,  he  is  like  a 
three-decker  on  fire,  and  his  shotted  guns  go  off,  as  the 
glow  reaches  them,  alike  dangerous  to  friend  or  foe. 
Though  he  seems  more  and  more  to  confound  material 
with  moral  success,  yet  there  is  always  something  whole 
some  in  his  unswerving  loyalty  to  reality,  as  he  under 
stands  it.  History,  in  the  true  sense,  he  does  not  and 
cannot  write,  for  he  looks  on  mankind  as  a  herd  without 
volition,  and  without  moral  force ;  but  such  vivid  pic 
tures  of  events,  such  living  conceptions  of  character,  we 
find  nowhere  else  in  prose.  The  figures  of  most  histo 
rians  seem  like  dolls  stuffed  with  bran,  whose  whole  sub- 


CARLYLE.  149 

stance  runs  out  through  any  hole  that  criticism  may 
tear  in  them,  but  Carlyle's  are  so  real  in  comparison, 
that,  if  you  prick  them,  they  bleed.  He  seems  a  little 
wearied,  here  and  there,  in  his  Friedrich,  with  the  mul 
tiplicity  of  detail,  and  does  his  filling-in  rather  shabbily ; 
but  he  still  remains  in  his  own  way,  like  his  hero,  the 
Only,  and  such  episodes  as  that  of  Voltaire  would  make 
the  fortune  of  any  other  writer.  Though  not  the  -safest 
of  guides  in  politics  or  practical  philosophy,  his  value  as 
an  inspirer  and  awakener  cannot  be  over-estimated.  It 
is  a  power  which  belongs  only  to  the  highest  order  of 
minds,  for  it  is  none  but  a  divine  fire  that  can  so  kindle 
and  irradiate.  The  debt  due  him  from  those  who  lis 
tened  to  the  teachings  of  his  prime  for  revealing  to  them 
what  sublime  reserves  of  power  even  the  humblest  may 
find  in  manliness,  sincerity,  and  self-reliance,  can  be  paid 
with  nothing  short  of  reverential  gratitude.  As  a  puri 
fier  of  the  sources  whence  our  intellectual  inspiration  is 
drawn,  his  influence  has  been  second  only  to  that  of 
Wordsworth,  if  even  to  his. 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

1864. 


have  been  many  painful  crises  since  the  im- 
-L  patient  vanity  of  South  Carolina  hurried  ten  pros 
perous  Commonwealths  into  a  crime  whose  assured  ret 
ribution  was  to  leave  them  either  at  the  mercy  of  the 
nation  they  had  wronged,  or  of  the  anarchy  they  had 
summoned  but  could  not  control,  when  no  thoughtful 
American  opened  his  morning  paper  without  dreading  to 
find  that  he  had  no  longer  a  country  to  love  and  honor. 
Whatever  the  result  of  the  convulsion  whose  first  shocks 
were  beginning  to  be  felt,  there  would  still  be  enough 
square  miles  of  earth  for  elbow-room ;  but  that  ineffable 
sentiment  made  up  of  memory  and  hope,  of  instinct  and 
tradition,  which  swells  every  man's  heart  and  shapes  his 
thought,  though  perhaps  never  present  to  his  conscious 
ness,  would  be  gone  from  it,  leaving  it  common  earth 
and  nothing  more.  Men  might  gather  rich  crops  from 
it,  but  that  ideal  harvest  of  priceless  associations  would 
be  reaped  no  longer ;  that  fine  virtue  which  sent  up 
messages  of  courage  and  security  from  every  sod  of 
it  would  have  evaporated  beyond  recall.  We  should  be 
irrevocably  cut  off  from  our  past,  and  be  forced  to  splice 
the  ragged  ends  of  our  lives  upon  whatever  new  con 
ditions  chance  might  leave  dangling  for  us. 

We  confess  that  we  had  our  doubts  at  first  whether 
the  patriotism  of  our  people  were  not  too  narrowly  pro 
vincial  to  embrace  the  proportions  of  national  peril. 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN.  151 

We  felt  an  only  too  natural  distrust  of  immense  public 
meetings  and  enthusiastic  cheers. 

That  a  reaction  should  follow  the  holiday  enthusiasm 
with  which  the  war  was  entered-on,  that  it  should  follow 
soon,  and  that  the  slackening  of  public  spirit  should 
be  proportionate  to  the  previous  over-tension,  might  well 
be  foreseen  by  all  who  had  studied  human  nature  or 
history.  Men  acting  gregariously  are  always  in  ex 
tremes  ;  as  they  are  one  moment  capable  of  higher 
courage,  so  they  are  liable,  the  next,  to  baser  depression, 
and  it  is  often  a  matter  of  chance  whether  numbers  shall 
multiply  confidence  or  discouragement.  Nor  does  de 
ception  lead  more  surely  to  distrust  of  men,  than  self- 
deception  to  suspicion  of  principles.  The  only  faith  that 
wears  well  and  holds  its  color  in  all  weathers  is  that 
which  is  woven  of  conviction  and  set  with  the  sharp 
mordant  of  experience.  Enthusiasm  is  good  material 
for  the  orator,  but  the  statesman  needs  something  more 
durable  to  work  in,  —  must  be  able  to  rely  on  the  delib 
erate  reason  and  consequent  firmness  of  the  people,  with 
out  which  that  presence  of  mind,  no  less  essential  in 
times  of  moral  than  of  material  peril,  will  be  wanting  at 
the  critical  moment.  Would  this  fervor  of  the  Free 
States  hold  out  1  Was  it  kindled  by  a  just  feeling  of  the 
value  of  constitutional  liberty  1  Had  it  body  enough  to 
withstand  the  inevitable  dampening  of  checks,  reverses, 
delays]  Had  our  population  intelligence  enough  to 
comprehend  that  the  choice  was  between  order  and  anar 
chy,  between  the  equilibrium  of  a  government  by  law 
and  the  tussle  of  misrule  by  pronunciamiento  ?  Could  a 
war  be  maintained  without  the  ordinary  stimulus  of 
hatred  and  plunder,  and  with  the  impersonal  loyalty  of 
principle  1  These  were  serious  questions,  and  with  no 
precedent  to  aid  in  answering  them. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  there  was,  indeed,  occa- 


152  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

sion  for  the  most  anxious  apprehension.  A  President 
known  to  be  infected  with  the  political  heresies,  and 
suspected  of  sympathy  with  the  treason,  of  the  Southern 
conspirators,  had  just  surrendered  the  reins,  we  will  not 
say  of  power,  but  of  chaos,  to  a  successor  known  only  as 
the  representative  of  a  party  whose  leaders,  with  long 
training  in  opposition,  had  none  in  the  conduct  of  affiiirs; 
an  empty  treasury  was  called  on  to  supply  resources 
beyond  precedent  in  the  history  of  finance ;  the  trees 
were  yet  growing  and  the  iron  Tinmined  with  which  a 
navy  was  to  be  built  and  armored ;  officers  without  dis- 
^Ipline  were  to  make  a  mob  into  an  army ;  and,  above 
all,  the  public  opinion  of  Europe,  echoed  and  reinforced 
with  every  vague  hint  and  every  specious  argument  of 
despondency  by  a  powerful  faction  at  home,  was  cither 
contemptuously  sceptical  or  actively  hostile.  It  would 
be  hard  to  over-estimate  the  force  of  this  latter  element 
of  disintegration  and  discouragement  among  a  people 
where  every  citizen  at  home,  and  every  soldier  in  the 
field,  is  a  reader  of  newspapers.  The  pedlers  of  rumor 
in  the  North  were  the  most  effective  allies  of  the  re 
bellion.  A  nation  can  be  liable  to  no  more  insidious 
treachery  than  that  of  the  telegraph,  sending  hourly  its 
electric  thrill  of  panic  along  the  remotest  nerves  of  the 
community,  till  the  excited  imagination  makes  every 
real  danger  loom  heightened  with  its  unreal  double. 

And  even  if  we  look  only  at  more  palpable  difficulties, 
the  problem  to  be  solved  by  our  civil  war  was  so  vast, 
both  in  its  immediate  relations  and  its  future  conse 
quences  ;  the  conditions  of  its  solution  were  so  intricate 
and  so  greatly  dependent  on  incalculable  and  uncontrol 
lable  contingencies ;  so  many  of  the  data,  whether  for 
hope  or  fear,  were,  from  their  novelty,  incapable  of 
arrangement  under  any  of  the  categories  of  historical 
precedent,  that  there  were  moments  of  crisis  when  the 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN.  153 

firmest  believer  in  the  strength  and  sufficiency  of  the 
democratic  theory  of  government  might  well  hold  his 
breath  in  vague  apprehension  of  disaster.  Our  teachers 
of  political  philosophy,  solemnly  arguing  from  the  pre 
cedent  of  some  petty  Grecian,  Italian,  or  Flemish  city, 
whose  long  periods  of  aristocracy  were  broken  now  and 
then  by  awkward  parentheses  of  mob,  had  always  taught 
us  that  democracies  were  incapable  of  the  sentiment  of 
loyalty,  of  concentrated  and  prolonged  effort,  of  far-reach 
ing  conceptions;  were  absorbed  in  material  interests;  im 
patient  of  regular,  and  much  more  of  exceptional  restraint; 
had  no  natural  nucleus  of  gravitation,  nor  any  forces  but 
centrifugal ;  were  always  on  the  verge  of  civil  war,  and 
slunk  at  last  into  the  natural  almshouse  of  bankrupt 
popular  government,  a  military  despotism.  Here  was 
indeed  a  dreary  outlook  for  persons  who  knew  democ 
racy,  not  by  rubbing  shoulders  with  it  lifelong,  but 
merely  from  books,  and  America  only  by  the  report  of 
some  fellow-Briton,  who,  having  eaten  a  bad  dinner  or 
lost  a  carpet-bag  here,  had  written  to  the  Times  demand 
ing  redress,  and  drawing  a  mournful  inference  of  demo 
cratic  instability.  Nor  were  men  wanting  among  our 
selves  who  had  so  steeped  their  brains  in  London 
literature  as  to  mistake  Cockneyism  for  European  cul 
ture,  and  contempt  of  their  country  for  cosmopolitan 
breadth  of  view,  and  who,  owing  all  they  had  and  all 
they  were  to  democracy,  thought  it  had  an  air  of  high- 
breeding  to  join  in  the  shallow  epicedium  that  our  bub 
ble  had  burst. 

But  beside  any  disheartening  influences  which  might 
affect  the  timid  or  the  despondent,  there  were  reasons 
enough  of  settled  gravity  against  any  over-confidence  of 
hope.  A  war  —  which,  whether  we  consider  the  expanse 
of  the  territory  at  stake,  the  hosts  brought  into  the  field, 
or  the  reach  of  the  principles  involved,  may  fairly  be 


154  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

reckoned  the  most  momentous  of  modern  times  —  was 
to  be  waged  by  a  people  divided  at  home,  unnerved  by 
fifty  years  of  peace,  under  a  chief  magistrate  without  ex 
perience  and  without  reputation,  whose  every  measure 
was  sure  to  be  cunningly  hampered  by  a  jealous  and 
unscrupulous  minority,  and  who,  while  dealing  with  un 
heard-of  complications  at  home,  must  soothe  a  hostile 
neutrality  abroad,  waiting  only  a  pretext  to  become  war. 
All  this  was  to  be  done  without  warning  and  without 
preparation,  while  at  the  same  time  a  social  revolution 
was  to  be  accomplished  in  the  political  condition  of  four 
millions  of  people,  by  softening  the  prejudices,  allaying 
the  fears,  and  gradually  obtaining  the  co-operation,  of 
their  unwilling  liberators.  Surely,  if  ever  there  were  an 
occasion  when  the  heightened  imagination  of  the  histo 
rian  might  see  Destiny  visibly  intervening  in  human 
affairs,  here  was  a  knot  worthy  of  her  shears.  Never, 
perhaps,  was  any  system  of  government  tried  by  so  con 
tinuous  and  searching  a  strain  as  ours  during  the  last 
three  years ;  never  has  any  shown  itself  stronger ;  and 
never  could  that  strength  be  so  directly  traced  to  the  __ 
virtue  and  intelligence  of  the  people,  —  to  that  general 
enlightenment  and  prompt  efficiency  of  public  opinion 
possible  only  under  the  influence  of  a  political  framework 
like  our  own.  We  find  it  hard  to  understand  how  even<_ 
a  foreigner  should  be  blind  to  the  grandeur  of  the  com 
bat  of  ideas  that  has  been  going  on  here,  —  to  the  heroic 
energy,  persistency,  and  self-reliance  of  a  nation  proving 
that  it  knows  how  much  dearer  greatness  is  than  mere 
power ;  and  we  own  that  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  con 
ceive  the  mental  and  moral  condition  of  the  American 
who  does  not  feel  his  spirit  braced  and  heightened  by 
being  even  a  spectator  of  such  qualities  and  achieve 
ments.  That  a  steady  purpose  and  a  definite  aim  have 
been  given  to  the  jarring  forces  which,  at  the  beginning 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN.  155 

of  the  war,  spent  themselves  in  the  discussion  of  schemes 
which  could  only  become  operative,  if  at  all,  after  the 
war  was  over ;  that  a  popular  excitement  has  been 
slowly  intensified  into  an  earnest  national  will ;  that 
a  somewhat  impracticable  moral  sentiment  has  been 
made  the  unconscious  instrument  of  a  practical  moral 
end  ;  that  the  treason  of  covert  enemies,  the  jealousy  of 
rivals,  the  unwise  zeal  of  friends,  have  been  made  not 
only  useless  for  mischief,  but  even  useful  for  good  ;  that 
the  conscientious  sensitiveness  of  England  to  the  horrors 
of  civil  conflict  has  been  prevented  from  complicating  a 
domestic  with  a  foreign  Avar ;  —  all  these  results,  any 
one  of  which  might  suffice  to  prove  greatness  in  a  ruler, 
have  been  mainly  due  to  the  good  sense,  the  good- 
humor,  the  sagacity,  the  large-mindedness,  and  the  un 
selfish  honesty  of  the  unknown  man  whom  a  blind  for 
tune,  as  it  seemed,  had  lifted  from  the  crowd  to  the 
most  dangerous  and  difficult  eminence  of  modern  times. 
It  is  by  presence  of  mind  in  untried  emergencies  that  the 
native  metal  of  a  man  is  tested  ;  it  is  by  the  sagacity  to 
see,  and  the  fearless  honesty  to  admit,  whatever  of  truth 
there  may  be  in  an  adverse  opinion,  in  order  more  con 
vincingly  to  expose  the  fallacy  that  lurks  behind  it,  that 
a  reasoner  at  length  gains  for  his  mere  statement  of  a 
fact  the  force  of  argument ;  it  is  by  a  wise  forecast 
which  allows  hostile  combinations  to  go  so  far  as  by  the 
inevitable  reaction  to  become  elements  of  his  own  power, 
that  a  politician  proves  his  genius  for  state-craft ;  and 
especially  it  is  by  so  gently  guiding  pxiblic  sentiment 
that  he  seems  to  follow  it,  by  so  yielding  doubtful  points 
that  he  can  be  firm  without  seeming  obstinate  in  essen 
tial  ones,  and  thus  gain  the  advantages  of  compromise 
without  the  weakness  of  concession  ;  by  so  instinctively 
comprehending  the  temper  and  prejudices  of  a  people  as 
to  make  them  gradually  conscious  of  the  superior  wisdom 


156  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

of  his  freedom  from  temper  and  prejudice,  —  it  is  by 
qualities  such  as  these  that  a  magistrate  shows  himself 
worthy  to  be  chief  in  a  commonwealth  of  freemen.  And 
it  is  for  qualities  such  as  these  that  we  firmly  believe 
History  will  rank  Mr.  Lincoln  among  the  most  prudent 
of  statesmen  and  the  most  successful  of  rulers.  If  we 
wish  to  appreciate  him,  we  have  only  to  conceive  the  in 
evitable  chaos  in  which  we  should  now  be  weltering,  had 

$veak  man  or  an  unwnse  one  been  chosen  in  his  stead. 

"Bare  is  back,"  says  the  Norse  proverb,  "without 
brother  behind  it " ;  and  this  is,  by  analogy,  true  of  an 
elective  magistracy.  The  hereditary  ruler  in  any  critical 
emergency  may  reckon  on  the  inexhaustible  resources  of 
prestige,  of  sentiment,  of  superstition,  of  dependent  in 
terest,  while  the  new  man  must  slowly  and  painfully 
create  all  these  out  of  the  unwilling  material  around 
him,  by  superiority  of  character,  by  patient  singleness 
of  purpose,  by  sagacious  presentiment  of  popular  ten 
dencies  and  instinctive  sympathy  with  the  national  char 
acter.  Mr.  Lincoln's  task  was  one  of  peculiar  and 
exceptional  difficulty.  Long  habit  had  accustomed  the 
American  people  to  the  notion  of  a  party  in  power,  and 
of  a  President  as  its  creature  and  organ,  while  the  more 
vital  fact,  that  the  executive  for  the  time  being  repre 
sents  the  abstract  idea  of  government  as  a  permanent 
principle  superior  to  all  party  and  all  private  interest, 
had  gradually  become  unfamiliar.  They  had  so  long 
seen  the  public  policy  more  or  less  directed  by  views  of 
party,  and  often  even  of  personal  advantage,  as  to  be 
ready  to  suspect  the  motives  of  a  chief  magistrate  com 
pelled,  for  the  first  time  in  our  history,  to  feel  himself 
the  head  and  hand  of  a  great  nation,  and  to  act  upon 
the  fundamental  maxim,  laid  down  by  all  publicists, 
that  the  first  duty  of  a  government  is  to  defend  and 
maintain  its  own  existence.  Accordingly,  a  powerful 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN.  157 

weapon  seemed  to  be  put  into  the  hands  of  the  opposi 
tion  by  the  necessity  under  which  the  administration 
found  itself  of  applying  this  old  truth  to  new  relations. 
Nor  were  the  opposition  his  only  nor  his  most  dangerous 
opponents. 

The  Republicans  had  carried  the  country  upon  an 
issue  in  which  ethics  were  more  directly  and  visibly 
mingled  with  politics  than  usual.  Their  leaders  were 
trained  to  a  method  of  oratory  which  relied  for  its  ef 
fect  rather  on  the  moral  sense  than  the  understanding. 
Their  arguments  were  drawn,  not  so  much  from  experi 
ence  as  from  general  principles  of  right  and  wrong. 
When  the  war  came,  their  system  continued  to  be  ap 
plicable  and  effective,  for  here  again  the  reason  of  the 
people  was  to  be  reached  and  kindled  through  their  sen 
timents.  It  was  one  of  those  periods  of  excitement, 
gathering,  contagious,  universal,  which,  while  they  last, 
exalt  and  clarify  the  minds  of  men,  giving  to  the  mere 
words  country,  human  rights,  democracy,  a  meaning  and 
a  force  beyond  that  of  sober  and  logical  argument. 
They  were  convictions,  maintained  and  defended  by  the 
supreme  logic  of  passion.  That  penetrating  fire  ran  in 
and  roused  those  primary  instincts  that  make  their  lair 
in  the  dens  and  caverns  of  the  mind.  What  is  called 
the  great  popular-  heart  was  awakened,  that  indefinable 
something  which  may  be,  according  to  circumstances, 
the  highest  reason  or  the  most  brutish  unreason.  But 
enthusiasm,  once  cold,  can  never  be  warmed  over  into 
anything  better  than  cant,  —  and  phrases,  when  once 
the  inspiration  that  filled  them  with  beneficent  power 
has  ebbed  away,  retain  only  that  semblance  of  meaning 
which  enables  them  to  supplant  reason  in  hasty  minds. 
Among  the  lessons  taught  by  the  French  Revolution 
there  is  none  sadder  or  more  striking  than  this,  that  you 
may  make  everything  else  out  of  the  passions  of  men 


158  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

except  a  political  system  that  will  work,  and  that  there 
is  nothing  so  pitilessly  and  unconsciously  cruel  as  sin 
cerity  formulated  into  dogma.  It  is  always  demoralizing 
to  extend  the  domain  of  sentiment  over  questions  where 
it  has  no  legitimate  jurisdiction ;  and  perhaps  the 
severest  strain  upon  Mr.  Lincoln  was  in  resisting  a  ten 
dency  of  his  own  supporters  which  chimed  with  his  own 
private  desires  while  wholly  opposed  to  his  convictions 
of  what  would  be  wise  policy. 

The  change  which  three  years  have  brought  about  is 
too  remarkable  to  be  passed  over  without  comment,  too 
weighty  in  its  lesson  not  to  be  laid  to  heart.  Never  did 
a  President  enter  upon  office  with  less  means  at  his 
command,  outside  his  own  strength  of  heart  and  steadi 
ness  of  understanding,  for  inspiring  confidence  in  the 
people,  and  so  winning  it  for  himself,  than  Mr.  Lincoln. 
All  that  was  known  of  him  was  that  he  was  a  good 
stump-speaker,  nominated  for  his  availability,  —  that  is, 
because  he  had  no  history,  —  and  chosen  by  a  party  with 
whose  more  extreme  opinions  he  was  not  in  sympathy. 
It  might  well  be  feared  that  a  man  past  fifty,  against 
whom  the  ingenuity  of  hostile  partisans  could  rake  up 
no  accusation,  must  be  lacking  in  manliness  of  charac 
ter,  in  decision  of  principle,  in  strength  of  will ;  that 
a  man  who  was  at  best  only  the  representative  of  a 
party,  and  who  yet  did  not  fairly  represent  even  that, 
would  fail  of  political,  much  more  of  popular,  support. 
And  certainly  no  one  ever  entered  upon  office  with  so 
few  resources  of  power  in  the  past,  and  so  many  mate 
rials  of  weakness  in  the  present,  as  Mr.  Lincoln.  Even 
in  that  half  of  the  Union  which  acknowledged  him  as 
President,  there  was  a  large,  and  at  that  time  dangerous 
minority,  that  hardly  admitted  his  claim  to  the  office, 
and  even  in  the  party  that  elected  him  there  was  also  a 
large  minority  that  suspected  him  of  being  secretly  a 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN.  159 

communicant  with  the  church  of  Laodicea.  All  that  he 
did  was  sure  to  be  virulently  attacked  as  ultra  by  one 
side  ;  all  that  he  left  undone,  to  be  stigmatized  as  proof 
of  lukewarmness  and  backsliding  by  the  other.  Mean 
while  he  was  to  carry  on  a  truly  colossal  war  by  means 
of  both ;  he  was  to  disengage  the  country  from  diplo 
matic  entanglements  of  unprecedented  peril  undisturbed 
by  the  help  or  the  hinderance  of  either,  and  to  win  from 
the  crowning  dangers  of  his  administration,  in  the  con 
fidence  of  the  people,  the  means  of  his  safety  and  their 
own.  He  has  contrived  to  do  it,  and  perhaps  none  of 
our  Presidents  since  Washington  has  stood  so  firm  in 
the  confidence  of  the  people  as  he  does  after  three  years 
of  stormy  administration. 

Mr.  Lincoln's  policy  was  a  tentative  one,  and  rightly 
so.  He  laid  down  no  programme  which  must  compel 
him  to  be  either  inconsistent  or  unwise,  no  cast-iron 
theorem  to  which  circumstances  must  be  fitted  as  they 
rose,  or  else  be  useless  to  his  ends.  He  seemed  to  have 
chosen  Mazarin's  motto,  Le  temps  et  moi.  The  moi,  to 
be  sure,  was  not  very  prominent  at  first ;  but  it  has 
grown  more  and  more  so,  till  the  world  is  beginning  to 
be  persuaded  that  it  stands  for  a  character  of  marked 
individuality  and  capacity  for  affairs.  Time  was  his 
prime-minister,  and,  we  began  to  think,  at  one  period, 
his  general-in-chief  also.  At  first  he  was  so  slow  that 
he  tired  out  all  those  who  see  no  evidence  of  progress 
but  in  blowing  up  the  engine ;  then  he  was  so  fast,  that 
he  took  the  breath  away  from  those  who  think  there  is 
no  getting  on  safely  while  there  is  a  spark  of  fire  under 
the  boilers.  God  is  the  only  being  who  has  time  enough ; 
but  a  prudent  man,  who  knows  how  to  seize  occasion, 
can  commonly  make  a  shift  to  find  as  much  as  he  needs. 
Mr.  Lincoln,  as  it  seems  to  us  in  reviewing  his  career, 
though  we  have  sometimes  in  our  impatience  thought 


1GO  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

otherwise,  has  always  waited,  as  a  wise  man  should,  till 
the  right  moment  brought  up  all  his  reserves.  Semper 
nocuit  differre  paratis,  is  a  sound  axiom,  but  the  really 
efficacious  man  will  also  be  sure  to  know  when  he  is  not 
ready,  and  be  firm  against  all  persuasion  and  reproach 
till  he  is. 

One  would  be  apt  to  think,  from  some  of  the  criticisms 
made  on  Mr.  Lincoln's  course  by  those  who  mainly  agree 
with  him  in  principle,  that  the  chief  object  of  a  states 
man  should  be  rather  to  proclaim  his  adhesion  to  certain 
doctrines,  than  to  achieve  their  triumph  by  quietly  ac 
complishing  his  ends.  In  our  opinion,  there  is  no  more 
unsafe  politician  than  a  conscientiously  rigid  doctrinaire, 
nothing  more  sure  to  end  in  disaster  than  a  theoretic 
scheme  of  policy  that  admits  of  no  pliability  for  contin 
gencies.  True,  there  is  a  popular  image  of  an  impossi-  ± 
ble  He,  in  whose  plastic  hands  the  submissive  destinies  ' 
of  mankind  become  as  wax,  and  to  whose  commanding 
necessity  the  toughest  facts  yield  with  the  graceful 
pliancy  of  fiction  ;  but  in  real  life  we  commonly  find 
that  the  men  who  control  circumstances,  as  it  is  called, 
are  those  who  have  learned  to  allow  for  the  influence  of 
their  eddies,  and  have  the  nerve  to  turn  them  to  account 
at  the  happy  instant.  Mr.  Lincoln's  perilous  task  has 
been  to  carry  a  rather  shaky  raft  through  the  rapids, 
making  fast  the  unrulier  logs  as  he  could  snatch  oppor 
tunity,  and  the  country  is  to  be  congratulated  that  he 
did  not  think  it  his  duty  to  run  straight  at  all  hazards, 
but  cautiously  to  assure  himself  with  his  setting-pole 
where  the  main  current  was,  and  keep  steadily  to  that. 
He  is  still  in  wild  water,  but  we  have  faith  that  his  skill 
and  sureness  of  eye  will  bring  him  out  right  at  last. 

A  curious,  and,  as  we  think,  not  inapt  parallel,  might 
be  drawn  between  Mr.  Lincoln  and  one  of  the  most 
striking  figures  in  modern  history,  —  Henry  IV.  of 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  161 

France.  The  career  of  the  latter  may  be  more  pictur 
esque,  as  that  of  a  daring  captain  always  is ;  but  in  all 
its  vicissitudes  there  is  nothing  more  romantic  than  that 
sudden  change,  as  by  a  rub  of  Aladdin's  lamp,  from  the 
attorney's  office  in  a  country  town  of  Illinois  to  the  helm 
of  a  great  nation  in  times  like  these.  The  analogy 
between  the  characters  and  circumstances  of  the  two 
men  is  in  many  respects  singularly  close.  Succeeding  to 
a  rebellion  rather  than  a  crown,  Henry's  chief  material 
dependence  was  the  Huguenot  party,  whose  doctrines 
sat  upon  him  with  a  looseness  distasteful  certainly,  if 
not  suspicious,  to  the  more  fanatical  among  them.  King 
only  in  name  over  the  greater  part  of  France,  and  with 
his  capital  barred  against  him,  it  yet  gradually  became 
clear  to  the  more  far-seeing  even  of  the  Catholic  party 
that  he  was  the  only  centre  of  order  and  legitimate 
authority  round  which  France  could  reorganize  itself. 
While  preachers  who  held  the  divine  right  of  kings  made 
the  churches  of  Paris  ring  with  declamations  in  favor  of 
democracy  rather  than  submit  to  the  heretic  dog  of  a 
Bearnois,  —  much  as  our  soi-disant  Democrats  have 
lately  been  preaching  the  divine  right  of  slavery,  and 
denouncing  the  heresies  of  the  Declaration  of  Indepen 
dence,  —  Henry  bore  both  parties  in  hand  till  he  was 
convinced  that  only  one  course  of  action  could  possibly 
combine  his  own  interests  and  those  of  France.  Mean 
while  the  Protestants  believed  somewhat  doubtfully  that 
he  was  theirs,  the  Catholics  hoped  somewhat  doubtfully 
that  he  would  be  theirs,  and  Henry  himself  turned  aside 
remonstrance,  advice,  and  curiosity  alike  with  a  jest 
or  a  proverb  (if  a  little  high,  he  liked  them  none  the 
worse),  joking  continually  as  his  manner  was.  We  have 
seen  Mr.  Lincoln  contemptuously  compared  to  Sancho 
Panza  by  persons  incapable  of  appreciating  one  of  the 
deepest  pieces  of  wisdom  in  the  profoundest  romance 


162  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ever  writtep;  namely,  that,  while  Don  Quixote  was 
incomparable  in  theoretic  and  ideal  statesmanship,  San- 
cho,  with  his  stock  of  proverbs,  the  ready  money  of 
human  experience,  made  the  best  possible  practical 
governor.  Henry  IV.  was  as  full  of  wise  saws  and 
modern  instances  as  Mr.  Lincoln,  but  beneath  all  this 
was  the  thoughtful,  practical,  humane,  and  thoroughly 
earnest  man,  around  whom  the  fragments  of  France 
were  to  gather  themselves  till  she  took  her  place  again 
as  a  planet  of  the  first  magnitude  in  the  European  sys 
tem.  In  one  respect  Mr.  Lincoln  was  more  fortunate 
than  Henry.  However  some  may  think  him  wanting  in 
zeal,  the  most  fanatical  can  find  no  taint  of  apostasy 
in  any  measure  of  his,  nor  can  the  most  bitter  charge 
him  with  being  influenced  by  motives  of  personal  in 
terest.  The  leading  distinction  between  the  policies  of 
the  two  is  one  of  circumstances.  Henry  went  over  to 
the  nation ;  Mr.  Lincoln  has  steadily  drawn  the  nation 
over  to  him.  One  left  a  united  France  ;  the  other,  we 
hope  and  believe,  will  leave  a  reunited  America.  We 
leave  our  readers  to  trace  the  further  points  of  difference 
and  resemblance  for  themselves,  merely  suggesting  a 
general  similarity  which  has  often  occurred  to  us.  One 
only  point  of  melancholy  interest  we  will  allow  ourselves 
to  touch  upon.  That  Mr.  Lincoln  is  not  handsome  nor 
elegant,  we  learn  from  certain  English  tourists  who 
would  consider  similar  revelations  in  regard  to  Queen 
Victoria  as  thoroughly  American  in  their  want  of  bien- 
seance.  It  is  no  concern  of  ours,  nor  does  it  affect  his  fit 
ness  for  the  high  place  he  so  worthily  occupies ;  but  he 
is  certainly  as  fortunate  as  Henry-  in  the  matter  of  good 
looks,  if  we  may  trust  contemporary  evidence.  Mr. 
Lincoln  has  also  been  reproached  with  Americanism  by 
some  not  unfriendly  British  critics ;  but,  with  all  defer 
ence,  we  cannot  say  that  we  like  him  any  the  worse  for 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  163 

It,  or  see  in  it  any  reason  why  he  should  govern  Ameri 
cans  the  less  wisely. 

People  of  more  sensitive  organizations  may  be  shocked, 
but  we  are  glad  that  in  this  our  true  war  of  indepen 
dence,  which  is  to  free  us  forever  from  the  Old  World, 
we  have  had  at  the  head  of  our  affairs  a  man  whom 
America  made,  as  God  made  Adam,  out  of  the  very 
earth,  unancestried,  unprivileged,  unknown,  to  show  us 
how  much  truth,  how  much  magnanimity,  and  how  much 
statecraft  await  the  -call  of  opportunity  in  simple  man 
hood  when  it  believes  in  the  justice  of  God  and  the 
worth  of  man.  Conventionalities  are  all  very  well  in 
their  proper  place,  but  they  shrivel  at  the  touch  of 
nature  like  stubble  in  the  fire.  The  genius  that  sways 
a  nation  by  its  arbitrary  will  seems  less  august  to  us 
than  that  which  multiplies  and  reinforces  itself  in  the 
instincts  and  convictions  of  an  entire  people.  Autocracy 
may  have  something  in  it  more  melodramatic  than  this, 
but  falls  far  short  of  it  in  human  value  and  interest. 

Experience  would  have  bred  in  us  a  rooted  distrust  of 
improvised  statesmanship,  even  if  we  did  not  believe 
politics  to  be  a  science,  which,  if  it  cannot  always  com 
mand  men  of  special  aptitude  and  great  powers,  at  least 
demands  the  long  and  steady  application  of  the  best 
powers  of  such  men  as  it  can  command  to  master  even 
its  first  principles.  It  is  curious,  that,  in  a  country 
which  boasts  of  its  intelligence,  the  theory  should  be  so 
generally  held  that  the  most  complicated  of  human  con 
trivances,  and  one  which  every  day  becomes  more  com 
plicated,  can  be  worked  at  sight  by  any  man  able  to 
talk  for  an  hour  or  two  without  stopping  to  think. 

Mr.  Lincoln  is  sometimes  claimed  as  an  example  of  a 
ready-made  ruler.  But  no  case  could  well  be  less  in 
point ;  for,  besides  that  he  was  a  man  of  such  fair-mind 
edness  as  is  always  the  raw  material  of  wisdom,  he  had 


164  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

in  his  profession  a  training  precisely  the  opposite  of  that 
to  which  a  partisan  is  subjected.  His  experience  as  a 
lawyer  compelled  him  not  only  to  see  that  there  is  a 
principle  underlying  every  phenomenon  in  human  affairs, 
but  that  there  are  always  two  sides  to  every  question, 
both  of  which  must  be  fully  understood  in  order  to  un 
derstand  either,  and  that  it  is  of  greater  advantage  to 
an  advocate  to  appreciate  the  strength  than  the  weakness 
of  his  antagonist's  position.  Nothing  is  more  remarka 
ble  than  the  unerring  tact  with  which,  in  his  debate  with 
Mr.  Douglas,  he  went  straight  to  the  reason  of  the  ques 
tion  ;  nor  have  we  ever  had  a  more  striking  lesson  in 
political  tactics  than  the  fact,  that,  opposed  to  a  man 
exceptionally  adroit  in  using  popular  prejudice  and  big 
otry  to  his  purpose,  exceptionally  unscrupulous  in  ap 
pealing  to  those  baser  motives  that  turn  a  meeting  of 
citizens  into  a  mob  of  barbarians,  he  should  yet  have  won 
his  case  before  a  jury  of  the  people.  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
as  far  as  possible  from  an  impromptu  politician.  His 
wisdom  -was  made  up  of  a  knowledge  of  things  as  well  as 
of  men ;  his  sagacity  resulted  from  a  clear  perception 
and  honest  acknowledgment  of  difficulties,  which  enabled 
him  to  see  that  the  only  durable  triumph  of  political 
opinion  is  based,  not  on  any  abstract  right,  but  upon  so 
much  of  justice,  the  highest  attainable  at  any  given 
moment  in  human  affairs,  as  may  be  had  in  the  balance 
of  mutual  concession.  Doubtless  he  had  an  ideal,  but  it 
was  the  ideal  of  a  practical  statesman,  —  to  aim  at  the 
best,  and  to  take  the  next  best,  if  he  is  lucky  enough 
to  get  even  that.  His  slow,  but  singularly  masculine, 
intelligence  taught  him  that  precedent  is  only  another 
name  for  embodied  experience,  and  that  it  counts  for 
even  more  in  the  guidance  of  communities  of  men  than 
in  that  of  the  individual  life.  He  was  not  a  man  who 
held  it  good  public  economy  to  pull  down  on  the  mere 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN.  165 

chance  of  rebuilding  better.  Mr.  Lincoln's  faith  in  God 
was  qualified  by  a  very  well-founded  distrust  of  the 
wisdom  of  man.  Perhaps  it  was  his  want  of  self-confi 
dence  that  more  than  anything  else  won  him  the  unlim 
ited  confidence  of  the  people,  for  they  felt  that  there 
would  be  no  need  of  retreat  from  any  position  he  had 
deliberately  taken.  The  cautious,  but  steady,  advance 
of  his  policy  during  the  war  was  like  that  of  a  Roman 
army.  He  left  behind  him  a  firm  road  on  which  public 
confidence  could  follow ;  he  took  America  with  him 
where  he  went;  what  he  gained  he  occupied,  and  his 
advanced  posts  became  colonies.  The  very  homeliness 
of  his  genius  was  its  distinction.  His  kingship  was  con 
spicuous  by  its  workday  homespun.  Never  was  ruler  so 
absolute  as  he,  nor  so  little  conscious  of  it ;  for  he  was 
the  incarnate  common-sense  of  the  people.  With  all 
that  tenderness  of  nature  whose  sweet  sadness  touched 
whoever  saw  him  with  something  of  its  own  pathos,  there 
was  no  trace  of  sentimentalism  in  his  speech  or  action. 
He  seems  to  have  had  but  one  rule  of  conduct,  always 
that  of  practical  and  successful  politics,  to  let  himself 
be  guided  by  events,  when  they  were  sure  to  bring  him 
out  where  he  wished  to  go,  though  by  what  seemed  •  to 
unpractical  minds,  which  let  go  the  possible  to  grasp  at 
the  desirable,  a  longer  road. 

Undoubtedly  the  highest  function  of  statesmanship  is 
by  degrees  to  accommodate  the  conduct  of  communities  to 
ethical  laws,  and  to  subordinate  the  conflicting  self-inter 
ests  of  the  day  to  higher  and  more  permanent  concerns. 
But  it  is  on  the  understanding,  and  not  on  the  senti 
ment,  of  a  nation  that  all  safe  legislation  must  be  based. 
Voltaire's  saying,  that  "  a  consideration  of  petty  circum 
stances  is  the  tomb  of  great  things,"  may  be  true  of 
individual  men,  but  it  certainly  is  not  true  of  govern 
ments.  It  is  by  a  multitude  of  such  considerations,  each 


166  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

in  itself  trifling,  but  all  together  weighty,  that  the  framers 
of  policy  can  alone  divine  what  is  practicable  and  there 
fore  wise.  The  imputation  of  inconsistency  is  one  to 
which  every  sound  politician  and  every  honest  thinker 
must  sooner  or  later  subject  himself.  The  foolish  and 
the  dead  alone  never  change  their  opinion.  The  course 
of  a  great  statesman  resembles  that  of  navigable  rivers, 
avoiding  immovable  obstacles  with  noble  bends  of  con 
cession,  seeking  the  broad  levels  of  opinion  on  which  men 
soonest  settle  and  longest  dwell,  following  and  marking 
the  almost  imperceptible  slopes  of  national  tendency, 
yet  always  aiming  at  direct  advances,  always  recruited 
from  sources  nearer  heaven,  and  sometimes  bursting 
open  paths  of  progress  and  fruitful  human  commerce 
through  what  seem  the  eternal  barriers  of  both.  It 
is  loyalty  to  great  ends,  even  though  forced  to  combine 
the  small  and  opposing  motives  of  selfish  men  to  accom 
plish  them ;  it  is  the  anchored  cling  to  solid  principles  of 
duty  and  action,  which  knows  how  to  swing  with  the 
tide,  but  is  never  carried  away  by  it,  —  that  we  demand 
in  public  men,  and  not  sameness  of  policy,  or  a  conscien 
tious  persistency  in  what  is  impracticable.  For  the  im 
practicable,  however  theoretically  enticing,  is  always  po 
litically  unwise,  sound  statesmanship  being  the  applica 
tion  of  that  prudence  to  the  public  business  which  is  the 
safest  guide  in  that  of  private  men. 

No  doubt  slavery  was  the  most  delicate  and  embarrass 
ing  question  with  which  Mr.  Lincoln  was  called  on  to  deal, 
and  it  was  one  which  no  man  in  his  position,  whatever  his 
opinions,  could  evade ;  for,  though  he  might  withstand 
the  clamor  of  partisans,  he  must  sooner  or  later  yield  to 
the  persistent  importunacy  of  circumstances,  which  thrust 
the  problem  upon  him  at  every  turn  and  in  every  shape. 

It  has  been  brought  against  us  as  an  accusation 
abroad,  and  repeated  here  by  people  who  measure  their 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  167 

country  rather  by  what  is  thought  of  it  than  by  what 
it  is,  that  our  war  has  not  been  distinctly  and  avow 
edly  for  the  extinction  of  slavery,  but  a  war  rather  for 
the  preservation  of  our  national  power  and  greatness,  in 
which  the  emancipation  of  the  negro  has  been  forced 
upon  us  by  circumstances  and  accepted  as  a  necessity. 
We  are  very  far  from  denying  this  ;  nay,  we  admit  that 
it  is  so  far  true  that  we  were  slow  to  renounce  our  con 
stitutional  obligations  even  toward  those  who  had  ab 
solved  us  by  their  own  act  from  the  letter  of  our  duty. 
We  are  speaking  of  the  government  which,  legally  in 
stalled  for  the  whole  country,  was  bound,  so  long  as 
it  was  possible,  not  to  overstep  the  limits  of  orderly  pre 
scription,  and  could  not,  without  abnegating  its  own 
very  nature,  take  the  lead  in  making  rebellion  an  ex 
cuse  for  revolution.  There  were,  no  doubt,  many  ardent 
and  sincere  persons  who  seemed  to  think  this  as  simple 
a  thing  to  do  as  to  lead  off  a  Virginia  reel.  They  forgot 
what  should  be  forgotten  least  of  all  in  a  system  like 
ours,  that  the  administration  for  the  time  being  repre 
sents  not  only  the  majority  which  elects  it,  but  the 
minority  as  well,  —  a  minority  in  this  case  powerful, 
and  so  little  ready  for  emancipation  that  it  was  opposed 
even  to  war.  Mr.  Lincoln  had  not  been  chosen  as 
general  agent  of  an  antislavery  society,  but  President  of 
the  United  States,  to  perform  certain  functions  exactly 
denned  by  law.  Whatever  were  his  wishes,  it  was  no 
less  duty  than  policy  to  mark  out  for  himself  a  line  of 
action  that  would  not  further  distract  the  country,  by 
raising  before  their  time  questions  which  plainly  would 
soon  enough  compel  attention,  and  for  which  every  day 
was  making  the  answer  more  easy. 

Meanwhile  he  must  solve  the  riddle  of  this  new 
Sphinx,  or  be  devoured.  Though  Mr.  Lincoln's  policy 
in  this  critical  affair  has  not  been  such  as  to  satisfy 


168  ABE  AH  AM   LINCOLN. 

those  who  demand  an  heroic  treatment  for  even  the 
most  trifling  occasion,  and  who  will  not  cut  their  coat 
according  to  their  cloth,  unless  they  can  borrow  the 
scissors  of  Atropos,  it  has  been  at  least  not  unworthy  of 
the  long-headed  king  of  Ithaca,  Mr.  Lincoln  had  the 
choice  of  Bassanio  offered  him.  Which  of  the  three 
caskets  held  the  prize  that  was  to  redeem  the  fortunes 
of  the  country  ]  There  was  the  golden  one  whose  showy 
speciousness  might  have  tempted  a  vain  man  ;  the  silver 
of  compromise,  which  might  have  decided  the  choice  of 
a  merely  acute  one ;  and  the  leaden,  —  dull  and  homely- 
looking,  as  prudence  always  is,  —  yet  with  something 
about  it  sure  to  attract  the  eye  of  practical  wisdom. 
Mr.  Lincoln  dallied  with  his  decision  perhaps  longer  than 
seemed  needful  to  those  on  whom  its  awful  responsibility 
was  not  to  rest,  but  when  he  made  it,  it  was  worthy  of 
his  cautious  but  sure-footed  understanding.  The  moral 
of  the  Sphinx-riddle,  and  it  is  a  deep  one,  lies  in  the 
childish  simplicity  of  the  solution.  Those  who  fail  in 
guessing  it,  fail  because  they  are  over-ingenious,  and 
cast  about  for  an  answer  that  shall  suit  their  own  notion 
of  the  gravity  of  the  occasion  and  of  their  own  dignity, 
rather  than  the  occasion  itself. 

In  a  matter  which  must  be  finally  settled  by  public 
opinion,  and  in  regard  to  which  the  ferment  of  prejudice 
and  passion  on  both  sides  has  not  yet  subsided  to  that 
equilibrium  of  compromise  from  which  alone  a  sound 
public  opinion  can  result,  it  is  proper  enough  for  the 
private  citizen  to  press  his  own  convictions  with  all  pos 
sible  force  of  argument  and  persuasion  ;  but  the  popular 
magistrate,  whose  judgment  must  become  action,  and 
whose  action  involves  the  whole  country,  is  bound  to 
wait  till  the  sentiment  of  the-  people  is  so  far  advanced 
toward  his  own  point  of  view,  that  what  he  does  shall 
find  support  in  it,  instead  of  merely  confusing  it  with 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN.  169 

new  elements  of  division.  It  was  not  unnatural  that 
men  earnestly  devoted  to  the  saving  of  their  country, 
and  profoundly  convinced  that  slavery  was  its  only  real 
enemy,  should  demand  a  decided  policy  round  which  all 
patriots  might  rally,  —  and  this  might  have  been  the 
wisest  course  for  an  absolute  ruler.  But  in  the  then 
unsettled  state  of  the  public  mind,  with  a  large  party 
decrying  even  resistance  to  the  slaveholders'  rebellion  as 
not  only  unwise,  but  even  unlawful;  with  a  majority, 
perhaps,  even  of  the  would-be  loyal  so  long  accustomed 
to  regard  the  Constitution  as  a  deed  of  gift  conveying  to 
the  South  their  own  judgment  as  to  policy  and  instinct 
as  to  right,  that  they  were  in  doubt  at  first  whether 
their  loyalty  were  due  to  the  country  or  to  slavery  ;  and 
with  a  respectable  body  of  honest  and  influential  men 
who  still  believed  in  the  possibility  of  conciliation,  —  Mr. 
Lincoln  judged  wisely,  that,  in  laying  down  a  policy  in 
deference  to  one  party,  he  should  be  giving  to  the  other 
the  very  fulcrum  for  which  their  disloyalty  had  been 
waiting. 

It  behooved  a  clear-headed  man  in  his  position  not  to 
yield  so  far  to  an  honest  indignation  against  the  brokers 
of  treason  in  the  North  as  to  lose  sight  of  the  materials 
for  misleading  which  were  their  stock  in  trade,  and 
to  forget  that  it  is  not  the  falsehood  of  sophistry  which 
is  to  be  feared,  but  the  grain  of  truth  mingled  with 
it  to  make  it  specious,  —  that  it  is  not  the  knavery  of 
the  leaders  so  much  as  the  honesty  of  the  followers  they 
may  seduce,  that  gives  them  power  for  evil.  It  was 
especially  his  duty  to  do  nothing  which  might  help  the 
people  to  forget  the  true  cause  of  the  war  in  fruitless 
disputes  about  its  inevitable  consequences. 

The  doctrine  of  State  rights  can  be  so  handled  by  an 
adroit  demagogue  as  easily  to  confound  the  distinction 
between  liberty  and  lawlessness  in  the  minds  of  ignorant 


170  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

persons,  accustomed  always  to  be  influenced  by  the 
sound  of  certain  words,  rather  than  to  reflect  upon  the 
principles  which  give  them  meaning.  For,  though  Seces 
sion  involves  the  manifest  absurdity  of  denying  to  a 
State  the  right  of  making  war  against  any  foreign  power 
while  permitting  it  against  the  United  States ;  though 
it  supposes  a  compact  of  mutual  concessions  and  guaran 
ties  among  States  without  any  ai'biter  in  case  of  dissen 
sion  ;  though  it  contradicts  common-sense  iri  assuming 
that  the  men  who  framed  our  government  did  not  know 
what  they  meant  when  they  substituted  Union  for  Con 
federation  ;  though  it  falsifies  history,  which  shows  that 
the  main  opposition  to  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution 
was  based  on  the  argument  that  it  did  not  allow  that 
independence  in  the  several  States  which  alone  would 
justify  them  in  seceding;  —  yet,  as  slavery  was  univer 
sally  admitted  to  be  a  reserved  right,  an  inference  could 
be  drawn  from  any  direct  attack  upon  it  (though  only  in 
self-defence)  to  a  natural  right  of  resistance,  logical 
enough  to  satisfy  minds  untrained  to  detect  fallacy,  as 
the  majority  of  men  always  are,  and  now  too  much  dis 
turbed  by  the  disorder  of  the  times,  to  consider  that  the 
order  of  events  had  any  legitimate  bearing  on  the  argu 
ment.  Though  Mr.  Lincoln  was  too  sagacious  to  give 
the  Northern  allies  of  the  Rebels  the  occasion  they 
desired  and  even  strove  to  provoke,  yet  from  the  begin 
ning  of  the  war  the  most  persistent  efforts  have  been 
made  to  confuse  the  public  mind  as  to  its  origin  and 
motives,  and  to  drag  the  people  of  the  loyal  States  down 
from  the  national  position  they  had  instinctively  taken 
to  the  old  level  of  party  squabbles  and  antipathies.  The 
wholly  unprovoked  rebellion  of  an  oligarchy  proclaim 
ing  negro  slavery  the  corner-stone  of  free  institutions, 
and  in  the  first  flush  of  over-hasty  confidence  venturing 
to  parade  the  logical  sequence  of  their  leading  dogma, 


ABRAHAM   LINCOLN.  171 

"  that  slavery  is  right  in  principle,  and  has  nothing  to 
do  with  difference  of  complexion,"  has  been  represented 
as  a  legitimate  and  gallant  attempt  to  maintain  the  true 
principles  of  democracy.  The  rightful  endeavor  of  an 
established  government,  the  least  onerous  that  ever 
existed,  to  defend  itself  against  a  treacherous  attack  on 
its  very  existence,  has  been  cunningly  made  to  seem  the 
wicked  effort  of  a  fanatical  clique  to  force  its  doctrines 
on  an  oppressed  population. 

Even  so  long  ago  as  when  Mr.  Lincoln,  not  yet  con 
vinced  of  the  danger  and  magnitude  of  the  crisis,  was 
endeavoring  to  persuade  himself  of  Union  majorities  at 
the  South,  and  to  carry  on  a  war  that  was  half  peace  in 
the  hope  of  a  peace  that  would  have  been  all  war,  — 
while  he  was  still  enforcing  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law, 
under  some  theory  that  Secession,  however  it  might 
absolve  States  from  their  obligations,  could  not  escheat 
them  of  their  claims  under  the  Constitution,  and  that 
slaveholders  in  rebellion  had  alone  among  mortals  the 
privilege  of  having  their  cake  and  eating  it  at  the  same 
time,  —  the  enemies  of  free  government  Avere  striving 
to  persuade  the  people  that  the  war  was  an  Abolition 
crusade.  To  rebel  without  reason  was  proclaimed  as 
one  of  the  rights  of  man,  while  it  was  carefully  kept 
out  of  sight  that  to  suppress  rebellion  is  the  first  duty 
of  government.  All  the  evils  that  have  come  upon  the 
country  have  been  attributed  to  the  Abolitionists,  though 
it  is  hard  to  see  how  any  party  can  become  permanently 
powerful  except  in  one  of  two  ways,  —  either  by  the 
greater  truth  of  its  principles,  or  the  extravagance  of 
the  party  opposed  to  it.  To  fancy  the  ship  of  state, 
riding  safe  at  her  constitutional  moorings,  suddenly 
engulfed  by  a  huge  kraken  of  Abolitionism,  rising  fr^m, 
unknown  depths  and  grasping  it  with  slimy  tentacles,  is 
to  look  at  the  natural  history  of  the  matter  with  the 


172  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

eyes  of  Pontoppidan.  To  believe  that  the  leaders  in 
the  Southern  treason  feared  any  danger  from  Abolition 
ism,  would  be  to  deny  them  ordinary  intelligence,  though 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  they  made  use  of  it  to 
stir  the  passions  and  excite  the  fears  of  their  deluded 
accomplices.  They  rebelled,  not  because  they  thought 
slavery  weak,  but  because  they  believed  it  strong 
enough,  not  to  overthrow  the  government,  but  to  get 
possession  of  it ;  for  it  becomes  daily  clearer  that  they 
used  rebellion  only  as  a  means  of  revolution,  and  if  they 
got  revolution,  though  not  in  the  shape  they  looked  for, 
is  the  American  people  to  save  them  from  its  conse 
quences  at  the  cost  of  its  own  existence  1  The  election 
of  Mr.  Lincoln,  which  it  was  clearly  in  their  power  to 
prevent  had  they  wished,  was  the  occasion  merely,  and 
not  the  cause,  of  their  revolt.  Abolitionism,  till  within 
a  year  or  two,  was  the  despised  heresy  of  a  few  earnest 
persons,  without  political  weight  enough  to  carry  the 
election  of  a  parish  constable ;  and  their  cardinal  prin 
ciple  was  disunion,  because  they  were  convinced  that 
within  the  Union  the  position  of  slavery  was  impregna 
ble.  In  spite  of  the  proverb,  great  effects  do  not 
follow  from  small  causes,  —  that  is,  disproportionately 
small,  —  but  from  adequate  causes  acting  under  certain 
required  conditions.  To  contrast  the  size  of  the  oak 
with  that  of  the  parent  acorn,  as  if  the  poor  seed  had 
paid  all  costs  from  its  slender  strong-box,  may  serve  for 
a  child's  wonder ;  but  the  real  miracle  lies  in  that  divine 
league  which  bound  all  the  forces  of  nature  to  the  sei%- 
vice  of  the  tiny  germ  in  fulfilling  its  destiny.  Every 
thing  has  been  at  work  for  the  past  ten  years  in  the 
cause  of  antislavery,  but  Garrison  and  Phillips  have  been 
far  less  successful  propagandists  than  the  slaveholders 
themselves,  with  the  constantly-growing  arrogance  of 
their  pretensions  and  encroachments.  They  have  forced 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  173 

the  question  upon  the  attention  of  every  voter  in  the 
Free  States,  by  defiantly  putting  freedom  and  democracy 
on  the  defensive.  But,  even  after  the  Kansas  outrages, 
there  was  no  wide-spread  desire  on  the  part  of  the  North 
to  commit  aggressions,  though  there  was  a  growing 
determination  to  resist  them.  The  popular  unanimity 
in  favor  of  the  war  three  years  ago  was  but  in  small 
measure  the  result  of  antislavery  sentiment,  far  less  of 
any  zeal  for  abolition.  But  every  month  of  the  war, 
every  movement  of  the  allies  of  slavery  in  the  Free 
States,  has  been  making  Abolitionists  by  the  thousand. 
The  masses  of  any  people,  however  intelligent,  are  very 
little  moved  by  abstract  principles  of  humanity  and 
justice,  until  those  principles  are  interpreted  for  them 
by  the  stinging  commentary  of  some  infringement  upon 
their  own  rights,  and  then  their  instincts  and  passions, 
once  aroused,  do  indeed  derive  an  incalculable  reinforce 
ment  of  impulse  and  intensity  from  those  higher  ideas, 
those  sublime  traditions,  which  have  no  motive  political 
force  till  they  are  allied  with  a  sense  of  immediate  per 
sonal  wrong  or  imminent  peril.  Then  at  last  the  stars 
in  their  courses  begin  to  fight  against  Sisera.  Had  any 
one  doubted  before  that  the  rights  of  human  nature  are 
unitary,  that  oppression  is  of  one  hue  the  world  over, 
no  matter  what  the  color  of  the  oppressed,  —  had  any 
one  failed  to  see  what  the  real  essence  of  the  contest 
was,  —  the  efforts  of  the  advocates  of  slavery  among 
ourselves  to  throw  discredit  upon  the  fundamental 
axioms  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the 
radical  doctrines  of  Christianity,  could  not  fail  to  sharp 
en  his  eyes. 

While  every  day  was  bringing  the  people  nearer  to  the 
conclusion  which  all  thinking  men  saw  to  be  inevitable 
from  the  beginning,  it  was  wise  in  Mr.  Lincoln  to  leave 
the  shaping  of  his  policy  to  events.  In  this  country, 


174  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

where  the  rough  and  ready  understanding  of  the  people 
is  sure  at  last  to  be  the  controlling  power,  a  profound 
common-sense  is  the  best  genius  for  statesmanship. 
Hitherto  the  wisdom  of  the  President's  measures  has 
been  justified  by  the  fact  that  they  have  always  resulted 
in  more  firmly  uniting  public  opinion.  One  of  the 
things  particularly  admirable  in  the  public  utterances 
of  President  Lincoln  is  a  certain  tone  of  familiar  dignity, 
which,  while  it  is  perhaps  the  most  difficult  attainment 
of  mere  style,  is  also  no  doubtful  indication  of  personal 
character.  There  must  be  something  essentially  noble 
in  an  elective  ruler  who  can  descend  to  the  level  of  con 
fidential  ease  without  losing  respect,  something  very 
manly  in  one  who  can  break  through  the  etiquette  of 
his  conventional  rank  and  trust  himself  to  the  reason 
and  intelligence  of  those  who  have  elected  him.  Xo 
higher  compliment  was  ever  paid  to  a  nation  than  the 
simple  confidence,  the  fireside  plainness,  with  which  Mr. 
Lincoln  always  addresses  himself  to  the  reason  of  the 
American  people.  This  was,  indeed,  a  true  democrat, 
who  grounded  himself  on  the  assumption  that  a  democ 
racy  can  think.  "  Come,  let  us  reason  together  about 
this  matter,"  has  been  the  tone  of  all  his  addresses  to 
the  people ;  and  accordingly  we  have  never  had  a  chief 
magistrate  who  so  won  to  himself  the  love  and  at  the 
same  time  the  judgment  of  his  countrymen.  To  us, 
that  simple  confidence  of  his  in  the  right-mindedness  of 
his  fellow-men  is  very  touching,  and  its  success  is  as 
strong  an  argument  as  we  have  ever  seen  in  favor  of  the 
theory  that  men  can  govern  themselves.  He  never 
appeals  to  any  vulgar  sentiment,  he  never  alludes  to  the 
humbleness  of  his  origin  ;  it  probably  never  occurred  to 
him,  indeed,  that  there  was  anything  higher  to  start 
from  than  manhood  ;  and  he  put  himself  on  a  level  with 
those  he  addressed,  not  by  going  down  to  them,  but 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  175 

only  by  taking  it  for  granted  that  they  had  brains  and 
would  come  up  to  a  common  ground  of  reason.  In  an 
article  lately  printed  in  "  The  Nation,"  Mr.  Bayard 
Taylor  mentions  the  striking  fact,  that  in  the  foulest 
dens  of  the  Five  Points  he  found  the  portrait  of  Lincoln. 
The  wretched  population  that  makes  its  hive  there 
threw  all  its  votes  and  more  against  him,  and  yet  paid 
this  instinctive  tribute  to  the  sweet  humanity  of  his 
nature.  Their  ignorance  sold  its  vote  and  took  its 
money,  but  all  that  was  left  of  manhood  in  them  recog 
nized  its  saint  and  martyr. 

Mr.  Lincoln  is  not  in  the  habit  of  saying,  "  This  is 
my  opinion,  or  my  theory,"  but,  "  This  is  the  conclusion 
to  which,  in  my  judgment,  the  time  has  come,  and  to 
which,  accordingly,  the  sooner  we  come  the  better  for 
us."  His  policy  has  been  the  policy  of  public  opinion 
based  On  adequate  discussion  and  on  a  timely  recogni 
tion  of  the  influence  of  passing  events  in  shaping  the 
features  of  events  to  come. 

One  secret  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  remarkable  success  in 
captivating  the  popular  mind  is  undoubtedly  an  un 
consciousness  of  self  which  enables  him,  though  under 
the  necessity  of  constantly  using  the  capital  7,  to  do  it 
without  any  suggestion  of  egotism.  There  is  no  single  - 
vowel  whicli  men's  mouths  can  pronounce  with  such 
difference  of  effect.  That  which  one  shall. hide  away, 
as  it  were,  behind  the  substance  of  his  discourse,  or,  if 
he  bring  it  to  the  front,  shall  use  merely  to  give  an 
agreeable  accent  of  individuality  to  what  he  says,  another 
shall  make  an  offensive  challenge  to  the  self-satisfaction 
of  all  his  hearers,  and  an  unwarranted  intrusion  upon 
each  man's  sense  of  personal  importance,  irritating  every 
pore  of  his  vanity,  like  a  dry  northeast  wind,  to  a  goose- 
flesh  of  opposition  and  hostility.  Mr.  Lincoln  has  never 
studied  Quinctilian;  but  he  has,  in  the  earnest  sim- 


176  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN. 

plicity  and  unaffected  Americanism  of  his  own  character, 
one  art  of  oratory  worth  all  the  rest.  He  forgets  him 
self  so  entirely  in  his  object  as  to  give  his  /  the  sympa 
thetic  and  persuasive  effect  of  We  with  the  great  body 
of  his  countrymen.  Homely,  dispassionate,  showing  all 
the  rough-edged  process  of  his  thought  as  it  goes  along, 
yet  arriving  at  his  conclusions  with  an  honest  kind  of 
every-day  logic,  he  is  so  eminently  our  representative 
man,  that,  when  he  speaks,  it  seems  as  if  the  people 
were  listening  to  their  own  thinking  aloud.  The  dig 
nity  of  his  thought  owes  nothing  to  any  ceremonial 
garb  of  words,  but  to  the  manly  movement  that  comes 
of  settled  purpose  and  an  energy  of  reason  that  knows 
not  what  rhetoric  means.  There  has  been  nothing  of 
Cleon,  still  less  of  Strepsiades  striving  to  underbid  him 
in  demagogism,  to  be  found  in  the  public  utterances  of 
Mr.  Lincoln.  He  has  always  addressed  the  intelligence 
of  men,  never  their  prejudice,  their  passion,  or  their 
ignorance. 


On  the  day  of  his  death,  this  simple  Western  attor 
ney,  who  according  to  one  party  was  a  vulgar  joker, 
and  whom  the  doctrinaires  among  his  own  supporters 
accused  of  wanting  every  element  of  statesmanship, 
was  the  most  absolute  ruler  in  Christendom,  and  this 
solely  by  the  hold  his  good-humored  sagacity  had 
laid  on  the  hearts  and  understandings  of  his  country 
men.  Nor  was  this  all,  for  it  appeared  that  he  had 
drawn  the  great  majority,  not  only  of  his  fellow-citizens, 
but  of  mankind  also,  to  his  side.  So  strong  and  so 
persuasive  is  honest  manliness  without  a  single  quality 
of  romance  or  unreal  sentiment  to  help  it !  A  civilian 
daring  times  of  the  most  captivating  military  achieve 
ment,  awkward,  with  no  skill  in  the  lower  technicalities 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.  177 

of  manners,  he  left  behind  him  a  fame  beyond  that  of 
any  conqueror,  the  memory  of  a  grace  higher  than  that 
of  outward  person,  and  of  a  gentlemanliness  deeper  than 
mere  breeding.  Never  before  that  startled  April  morn 
ing  did  such  multitudes  of  men  shed  tears  for  the  death 
of  one  they  had  never  seen,  as  if  -with  him  a  friendly 
presence  had  been  taken  away  from  their  lives,  leaving 
them  colder  and  darker.  Never  was  funeral  panegyric 
so  eloquent  as  the  silent  look  of  sympathy  which  stran 
gers  exchanged  when  they  met  on  that  day.  Their 
common  manhood  had  lost  a  kinsman. 


THE  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES 
GATES  PERCIVAL. 


is  an  interesting  and  in  many  respects  instruc- 
'  _L  tive  book.  Mr.  Ward  has  done  his  work,  as  is 
fitting,  in  a  loving  spirit ;  and  if  he  over-estimates  both 
what  Percival  was  and  what  he  did,  he  enables  us  to 
form  our  own  judgment  by  letting  him  so  far  as  possible 
speak  for  himself.  The  book  gives  a  rather  curious 
picture  of  what  the  life  of  a  man  of  letters  is  likely  to 
be  in  a  country  not  yet  ripe  for  literary  production, 
especially  if  he  be  not  endowed  with  the  higher  qualities 
which  command  and  can  wait  for  that  best  of  all  suc 
cesses  which  comes  slowly.  In  a  generation  where 
everybody  can  write  verses,  and  where  certain  modes  of 
thought  and  turns  of  phrase  have  become  so  tyrannous 
that  it  is  as  hard  to  distinguish  between  the  produc 
tions  of  one  minor  poet  and  another  as  among  those  of 
so  many  Minnesingers  or  Troubadours,  there  is  a  de 
mand  for  only  two  things,  —  for  what  chimes  with  the 
moment's  whim  of  popular  sentiment  and  is  forgotten 
when  that  has  changed,  or  for  what  is  never  an  anachro 
nism,  because  it  slakes  or  seems  to  slake  the  eternal  thirst 
of  our  nature  for  those  ideal  waters  that  glimmer  before 
us  and  still  before  us  in  ever-renewing  mirage.  Percival 
met  'neither  of  these  conditions.  With  a  nature  singu 
larly  unplastic,  unsympathetic,  and  self-involved,  he  was 
incapable  of  receiving  into  his  own  mind  the  ordinary 
emotions  of  men  and  giving  them  back  in  music ;  and 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PEECIVAL.     179 

with  a  lofty  conception  of  the  object  and  purposes  of 
poesy,  he  had  neither  the  resolution  nor  the  power 
which  might  have  enabled  him  to  realize  it.  He  ofters 
as  striking  an  example  as  could  be  found  of  the  poetic 
temperament  unballasted  with  those  less  obvious  quali 
ties  which  make  the  poetic  faculty.  His  verse  carries 
every  inch  of  canvas  that  diction  and  sentiment  can 
crowd,  but  the  craft  is  cranky,  and  we  miss  that  deep- 
grasping  keel  of  reason  which  alone  can  steady  and  give 
direction.  His  mind  drifts,  too  waterlogged  to  answer 
the  helm,  and  in  his  longer  poems,  like  "  Prometheus," 
half  the  voyage  is  spent  in  trying  to  make  up  for  a  lee 
way  which  becomes  at  last  irretrievable.  If  he  had  a 
port  in  view  when  he  set  out,  he  seems  soon  to  give  up 
all  hope  of  ever  reaching  it ;  and  wherever  we  open  the 
log-book,  we  find  him  running  for  nowhere  in  particular, 
as  the  wind  happens  to  lead,  or  lying-to  in  the  merest 
gale  of  verbiage.  The  truth  is,  that  Percival  was  led  to 
the  writing  of  verse  by  a  sentimental  desire  of  the  mind, 
and  not  by  that  concurring  instinct  of  all  the  faculties 
which  is  a  self-forgetting  passion  of  the  entire  man. 
Too  excitable  to  possess  his  subject  fully,  as  a  man  of 
mere  talent  may  often  do,  he  is  not  possessed  by  it  as 
the  man  of  genius  is,  and  seems  helplessly  striving,  the 
greater  part  of  the  time,  to  make  out  what,  in  the  name 
of  common  or  uncommon  sense,  he  is  after.  With  all 
the  stock  properties  of  verse  whirling  and  dancing  about 
his  ears  puffed  out  to  an  empty  show  of  life,  the  reader 
of  much  of  his  blank  verse  feels  as  if  a  mob  of  well- 
draperied  clothes-lines  were  rioting  about  him  in  all  the 
unwilling  ecstasy  of  a  thunder-gust. 

Percival,  living  from  1795  to  1856,  arrived  at  man 
hood  just  as  the  last  war  with  England  had  come  to  an 
end.  Poor,  shy,  and  proud,  there  is  nothing  in  his 
earlier  years  that  might  not  be  paralleled  in  those  of 


180     LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL. 

hundreds  of  sensitive  boys  who  gradually  get  the  non 
sense  shaken  out  of  them  in  the  rough  school  of  life. 
The  length  of  the  schooling  needful  in  his  case  is  what 
makes  it  peculiar.  Not  till  after  he  was  fifty,  if  even 
then,  did  he  learn  that  the  world  never  takes  a  man  at 
his  own  valuation,  and  never  pays  money  for  what  it 
does  not  want,  or  think  it  wants.  It  did  not  want  his 
poetry,  simply  because  it  was  not,  is  not,  and  by  no  con 
ceivable  power  of  argument  can  be  made,  interesting,  — 
the  first  duty  of  every  artistic  product.  Percival,  who 
would  have  thought  his  neighbors  mad  if  they  had  in 
sisted  on  his  buying  twenty  thousand  refrigerators  mere 
ly  because  they  had  been  at  the  trouble  of  making  them, 
and  found  it  convenient  to  turn  them  into  cash,  could 
never  forgive  the  world  for  taking  this  business  view  of 
the  matter  in  his  own  case.  He  went  on  doggedly, 
making  refrigerators  of  every  possible  pattern,  and  com 
forted  himself  with  the  thought  of  a  wiser  posterity, 
which  should  have  learned  that  the  purpose  of  poetry  is 
to  cool  and  not  to  kindle.  His  "Mind,"  which  is  on 
the  whole  perhaps  the  best  of  his  writings,  vies  in  cold 
ness  with  the  writings  of  his  brother  doctor,  Akenside, 
whose  "  Pleasures  of  Imagination"  are  something  quite 
other  than  pleasing  in  reality.  If  there  be  here  and 
there  a  semblance  of  pale  fire,  it  is  but  the  reflection  of 
moonshine  upon  ice.  Akenside  is  respectable,  because 
he  really  had  something  new  to  say,  in  spite  of  his  pom 
pons,  mouthing  way  of  saying  it ;  but  when  Percival 
says  it  over  again,  it  is  a  little  too  much.  In  his  more 
ambitious  pieces,  —  and  it  is  curious  how  literally  the 
word  "  pieces  "  applies  to  all  he  did,  —  he  devotes  him 
self  mainly  to  telling  us  what  poetry  ought  to  be,  as  if 
mankind  were  not  always  more  than  satisfied  with  any 
one  who  fulfils  the  true  office  of  poet,  by  showing  them, 
with  the  least  possible  fuss,  what  it  is.  Percival  was  a 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PEECIVAL.     181 

professor  of  poetry  rather  than  a  poet,  and  we  are  not 
surprised  at  the  number  of  lectures  he  reads  us,  when 
we  learn  that  in  early  life  he  was  an  excellent  demon 
strator  of  anatomy,  whose  subject  must  be  dead  before 
his  business  with  it  begins.  His  interest  in  poetry  was 
always  more  or  less  scientific.  He  was  forever  trying 
experiments  in  matter  and  form,  especially  the  latter. 
And  these  were  especially  unhappy,  because  it  is  plain 
that  he  had  no  musical  ear,  or  at  best  a  very  imperfect 
one.  His  attempts  at  classical  metres  are  simply  un 
readable,  whether  as  verse  or  prose.  He  contrives  to 
make  even  the  Sapphic  so,  which  when  we  read  it  in 
Latin  moves  featly  to  our  modern  accentuation.  Let 
any  one  who  wishes  to  feel  the  difference  between  ear 
and  no  ear  compare  Percival's  specimens  with  those  in 
the  same  kind  of  Coleridge,  who  had  the  finest  metrical 
sense  since  Milton.  We  take  this  very  experimenting 
to  be  a  sufficient  proof  that  Percival's  faculty,  such  as  it 
was,  and  we  do  not  rate  it  highly,  was  artificial,  and  not 
innate.  The  true  poet  is  much  rather  experimented 
upon  by  life  and  nature,  by  joy  and  sorrow,  by  beauty 
and  defect,  till  it  be  found  out  whether  he  have  any 
hidden  music  in  him  that  can  sing  them  into  an  accord 
with  the  eternal  harmony  which  we  call  God. 

It  is  easy  to  trace  the  literary  influences  to  which  the  • 
mind  of  Percival  was  in  turn  subjected.  Early  in  life 
we  find  a  taint  of  Byronism,  which  indeed  does  not 
wholly  disappear  to  the  last.  There  is  among  his  poems 
"  An  Imprecation,"  of  which  a  single  stanza  will  suffice 
as  a  specimen  :  — 

"  Wrapped  in  sheets  of  gory  lightning, 
While  cursed  night-hags  ring  thy  knell, 
May  the  arm  of  vengeance  bright'ning, 
O'er  thee  wave  the  sword  of  hell !  " 

If  we  could  fancy  Laura  Matilda  shut  up  tipsy  in  the 


182    LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMFS  GATES  PERCIVAL. 

watch-house,  we  might  suppose  her  capable  of  this  me 
lodious  substitute  for  swearing.  We  confess  that  \\e 
cannot  read  it  without  laughing,  after  learning  from  Mr. 
Ward  that  its  Salmoneus-thunderbolts  were  launched  at 
the  comfortable  little  city  of  Hartford,  because  the  poet 
fancied  that  the  inhabitants  thereof  did  not  like  him  or 
his  verses  so  much  as  he  himself  did.  There  is  some 
thing  deliriously  ludicrous  in  the  conception  of  night- 
hags  ringing  the  orthodox  bell  of  the  Second  Congrega 
tional  or  First  Baptist  Meeting-house  to  summon  the 
parishioners  to  witness  these  fatal  consequences  of  not 
reading  Percival's  poems.  Nothing  less  than  the  fear 
of  some  such  catastrophe  could  compel  the  perusal  of 
the  greater  part  of  them.  Next  to  Byron  comes  Moore, 
whose  cloying  sentimentalism  and  too  facile  melody  are 
recalled  by  the  subject  and  treatment  of  very  many  of 
the  shorter  lyrics  of  Percival.  In  "Prometheus"  it  is 
Shelley  who  is  paramount  for  the  time,  and  Shelley  at 
his  worst  period,  before  his  unwieldy  abundance  of 
incoherent  words  and  images,  that  were  merely  words 
and  images  without  any  meaning  of  real  experience  to 
give  them  solidity,  had  beeu  compressed  in  the  stricter 
moulds  of  thought  and  study.  In  the  blank  verse 
again,  we  encounter  Wordsworth's  tone  and  sentiment. 
These  were  no  good  models  for  Percival,  who  always 
improvised,  and  who  seems  to  have  thought  verse  the 
great  distinction  between  poetry  and  prose.  Percival 
got  nothing  from  Shelley  but  the  fatal  copiousness  which 
is  his  vice,  nothing  from  Wordsworth  but  that  tendency 
to  preach  at  every  corner  about  a  sympathy  with  nature 
which  is  not  his  real  distinction,  and  which  becomes  a 
wearisome  cant  at  second-hand.  Shelley  and  Words 
worth  are  both  stilted,  though  in  different  ways.  Shel 
ley  wreathed  his  stilts  with  flowers;  while  Wordsworth, 
protesting  against  the  use  of  them  as  sinful,  mounts  his 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL.     183 

solemnly  at  last,  and  stalks  away  conscientiously  eschew 
ing  whatever  would  serve  to  hide  the  naked  wood,  — 
nay,  was  it  not  Gray's  only  that  were  scandalous,  and 
were  not  his  own,  modelled  upon  those  of  the  sainted 
Cowper,  of  strictly  orthodox  pattern  after  all  1  Percival, 
like  all  imitators,  is  caught  by  the  defects  of  what  he 
copies,  and  exaggerates  them.  With  him  the  stilts  are 
the  chief  matter ;  and  getting  a  taller  pair  than  either 
of  his  predecessors,  he  lifts  his  commonplace  upon  them 
only  to  make  it  more  drearily  conspicuous.  Shelley  has 
his  gleams  of  unearthly  wildfire,  Wordsworth  is  by  fits 
the  most  deeply  inspired  man  of  his  generation ;  but 
Percival  has  no  lucid  interval.  He  is  pertinaciously  and 
\mappeasably  dull,  —  as  dull  as  a  comedy  of  Goethe. 
He  never  in  his  life  wrote  a  rememberable  verse.  We 
should  not  have  thought  this  of  any  consequence  now, 
for  we  need  not  try  to  read  him,  did  not  Mr.  Ward  with 
amusing  gravity  all  along  assume  that  he  was  a  great 
poet.  There  was  scarce  timber  enough  in  him  for  the 
making  of  a  Tiedge  or  a  Hagedorn,  both  of  whom  he 
somewhat  resembles. 

Percival  came  to  maturity  at  an  unfortunate  time  for 
a  man  so  liable  to  self-delusion.  Leaving  college  with  so 
imperfect  a  classical  training  (in  spite  of  the  numerous 
"  testimonials  "  cited  by  Mr.  Ward)  that  he  was  capable 
of  laying  the  accent  on  the  second  syllable  of  Pericles, 
he  seems  never  to  have  systematically  trained  even  such 
faculty  as  was  in  him,  but  to  have  gone  on  to  the  end 
mistaking  excitability  of  brain  for  wholesome  exercise  of 
thought.  The  consequence  is  a  prolonged  immaturity, 
which  makes  his  latest  volume,  published  in  1843,  as 
crude  and  as  plainly  wanting  in  enduring  quality  as  the 
first  number  of  his  "  Clio."  We  have  the  same  old  com 
plaints  of  neglected  genius,  —  as  if  genius  could  ever  be 
neglected  so  long  as  it  has  the  perennial  consolation  of 


184    LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL. 

its  own  divine  society,  —  the  same  wilted  sentiment,  the 
same  feeling  about  for  topics  of  verse  in  which  he  may 
possibly  find  that  inspiration  from  without  which  the 
true  poet  cannot  flee  from  in  himself.  These  tedious 
wailiugs  about  heavenly  powers  suffocating  in  the  heavy 
atmosphere  of  an  uncongenial,  nnrecognizing  world,  and 
Percival  is  profuse  of  them,  are  simply  an  advertisement 
to  whoever  has  ears  of  some  innate  disability  in  the  man 
who  utters  them.  Heavenly  powers  know  very  well  how 
to  take  care  of  themselves.  The  poor  "  World,"  meaning 
thereby  that  small  fraction  of  society  which  has  any 
personal  knowledge  of  an  author  or  his  affairs,  has  had 
great  wrong  done  it  in  such  matters.  It  is  not,  and 
never  was,  the  powers  of  a  man  that  it  neglects,  —  it 
could  not  if  it  would,  —  but  his  weaknesses,  and  espe 
cially  the  publication  of  them,  of  which  it  grows  weary. 
It  can  never  supply  any  man  with  what  is  wanting 
in  himself,  and  the  attempt  to  do  it  only  makes  bad 
worse.  If  a  man  can  find  the  proof  of  his  own  genius 
only  in  public  appreciation,  still  worse,  if  his  vanity  con 
sole  itself  with  taking  it  as  an  evidence  of  rare  qualities 
in  himself  that  his  fellow-mortals  are  unable  to  see  them, 
it  is  all  up  with  him.  The  "  World  "  resolutely  refused 
to  find  Wordsworth  entertaining,  and  it  refuses  still,  on 
good  grounds ;  but  the  genius  that  was  in  him  bore  up 
unflinchingly,  would  take  no  denial,  got  its  claim  admit 
ted  on  all  hands,  and  impregnated  at  last  the  literature 
of  an  entire  generation,  though  liabitans  in  sicco,  if  ever 
genius  did.  But  Percival  seems  to  have  satisfied  him 
self  with  a  syllogism  something  like  this  :  Men  of  genius 
are  neglected ;  the  more  neglect,  the  more  genius ;  I  am 
altogether  neglected,  —  ergo,  wholly  made  up  of  that 
priceless  material. 

The   truth  was  that  he  suffered  rather  from  over- 
appreciation  ;  and  "  when,"  says  a  nameless  old  French- 


LIFE  AXD  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL.     185 

man,  "  I  see  a  man  go  up  like  a  rocket,  I  expect  before 
long  to  see  the  stick  come  down."  The  times  were 
singularly  propitious  to  mediocrity.  As  in  Holland  one 
had  only  to 

"  Invent  a  shovel  and  be  a  magistrate," 

so  here  to  write  a  hundred  blank  verses  was  to  be  im 
mortal,  till  somebody  else  wrote  a  hundred  and  fifty 
blanker  ones.  It  had  been  resolved  unanimously  that 
we  must  and  would  have  a  national  literature.  England, 
France,  Spain,  Italy,  each  already  had  one,  Germany 
was  getting  one  made  as  fast  as  possible,  and  Ireland 
vowed  that  she  once  had  one  far  surpassing  them  all. 
To  be  respectable,  we  must  have  one  also,  and  that 
speedily.  That  we  were  not  yet,  in  any  true  sense,  a 
nation ;  that  we  wanted  that  literary  and  social  atmos 
phere  which  is  the  breath  of  life  to  all  artistic  produc 
tion  ;  that  our  scholarship,  such  as  it  was,  was  mostly 
of  that  theological  sort  which  acts  like  a  prolonged 
drouth  upon  the  brain ;  that  our  poetic  fathers  were 
Joel  Barlow  and  Timothy  Dwight,  —  was  nothing  to  the 
purpose ;  a  literature  adapted  to  the  size  of  the  coun 
try  was  what  we  must  and  would  have.  Given  the 
number  of  square  miles,  the  length  of  the  rivers,  the 
size  of  the  lakes,  and  you  have  the  greatness  of  the  lit 
erature  we  were  bound  to  produce  without  further 
delay.  If  that  little  dribble  of  an  Avon  had  succeeded 
in  engendering  Shakespeare,  what  a  giant  might  we  not 
look  for  from  the  mighty  womb  of  Mississippi !  Physical 
Geography  for  the  first  time  took  her  rightful  place 
as  the  tenth  and  most  inspiring  Muse.  A  glance  at  the 
map  would  satisfy  the  most  incredulous  that  she  had 
done  her  best  for  us,  and  should  we  be  wanting  to  the 
glorious  opportunity  ]  Not  we  indeed !  So  surely  as 
Franklin  invented  the  art  of  printing,  and  Fulton  the 
steam-engine,  we  would  invent  us  a  great  poet  in  time 


186     LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL. 

to  send  the  news  by  the  next  packet  to  England,  and 
teach  her  that  we  were  her  masters  in  arts  as  well  as 
arms. 

Percival  was  only  too  ready  to  be  invented,  and  he 
forthwith  produced  his  bale  of  verses  from  a  loom  capa 
ble  of  turning  off  a  hitherto  unheard-of  number  of  yards 
to  the  hour,  and  perfectly  adapted  to  the  amplitude  of 
our  territory,  inasmuch  as  it  was  manufactured  on  the 
theory  of  covering  the  largest  surface  with  the  least 
possible  amount  of  meaning  that  would  hold  words 
together.  He  was  as  ready  to  accept  the  perilous  em 
prise,  and  as  loud  in  asserting  his  claim  thereto,  as 
Sir  Kay  used  to  be,  and  with  much  the  same  result. 
Our  critical  journals  —  and  America  certainly  has  led 
the  world  in  a  department  of  letters  which  of  course 
requires  no  outfit  but  the  power  to  read  and  write,  gra 
tuitously  furnished  by  our  public  schools  —  received  him 
with  a  shout  of  welcome.  Here  came  the  true  deliverer 
at  last,  mounted  on  a  steed  to  which  he  himself  had 
given  the  new  name  of  "  Pegasus,"  —  for  we  were  to  be 
original  in  everything,  —  and  certainly  blowing  his  own 
trumpet  with  remarkable  vigor  of  lungs.  Solitary  en 
thusiasts,  who  had  long  awaited  this  sublime  avatar, 
addressed  him  in  sonnets  which  he  accepted  with  a 
gravity  beyond  all  praise.  (To  be  sure,  even  Mr.  Ward 
seems  to  allow  that  his  sense  of  humor  was  hardly  equal 
to  his  other  transcendent  endowments.)  His  path  was 
strewn  with  laurel  —  of  the  native  variety,  altogether 
superior  to  that  of  the  Old  World,  at  any  rate  not  pre 
cisely  like  it.  Verses  signed  "  P.,"  as  like  each  other  as 
two  peas,  and  as  much  like  poetry  as  that  vegetable 
is  like  a  peach,  were  watched  for  in  the  corner  of  a  news 
paper  as  an  astronomer  watches  for  a  new  planet.  There 
was  never  anything  so  comically  unreal  since  the  crown 
ing  in  the  Capitol  of  Messer  Francesco  Petrarca,  Grand 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL.     187 

Sentimentalist  in  Ordinary  at  the  Court  of  King  Robert 
of  Naples.  Unhappily,  Percival  took  it  all  quite  seri 
ously.  There  was  no  praise  too  ample  for  the  easy 
elasticity  of  his  swallow.  He  believed  himself  as  gigan 
tic  as  the  shadow  he  cast  on  these  rolling  mists  of  insub 
stantial  adulation,  and  life-long  he  could  never  make  out 
why  his  fine  words  refused  to  butter  his  parsnips  for 
him,  nay,  to  furnish  both  parsnips  and  sauce.  While  the 
critics  were  debating  precisely  how  many  of  the  prime 
qualities  of  the  great  poets  of  his  own  and  preceding 
generations  he  combined  in  his  single  genius,  and  in 
what  particular  respects  he  surpassed  them  all,  —  a 
point  about  which  he  himself  seems  never  to  have  had 
any  doubts,  —  the  public,  which  could  read  Scott  and 
Byron  with  avidity,  and  which  was  beginning  even  to 
taste  Words\vorth,  found  his  verses  inexpressibly  weari 
some.  They  would  not  throng  and  subscribe  for  a  col 
lected  edition  of  those  works  which  singly  had  been  too 
much  for  them.  With  whatever  dulness  of  sense  they 
may  be  charged,  they  have  a  remarkably  keen  scent  for 
tediousness,  and  will  have  none  of  it  unless  in  a  tract  or 
sennon,  where,  of  course,  it  is  to  be  expected.  Percival 
never  forgave  the  pxiblic ;  but  it  was  the  critics  that  he 
never  should  have  forgiven,  for  of  all  the  maggots  that 
can  make  their  way  into  the  brains  through  the  ears, 
there  is  none  so  disastrous  as  the  persuasion  that  you 
are  a  great  poet.  There  is  surely  something  in  the  con 
struction  of  the  ears  of  small  authors  which  lays  them 
specially  open  to  the  inroads  of  this  pest.  It  tickles 
pleasantly  while  it  eats  away  the  fibre  of  will,  and  inca 
pacitates  a  man  for  all  honest  commerce  with  realities. 
Unhappily  its  insidious  titillation  seems  to  have  been 
Percival's  one  great  pleasure  during  life. 

We  began  by  saying  that  the   book  before  us  was 
interesting  and  instructive ;  but  we  meant  that  it  was  so 


188     LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL. 

not  so  much  from  any  positive  merits  of  its  own  as  by 
the  lesson  which  almost  every  page  of  it  suggests.  To 
those  who  have  some  knowledge  of  the  history  of  litera 
ture,  or  some  experience  in  life,  it  is  from  beginning 
to  end  a  history  of  weakness  mistaking  great  desires  for 
great  powers.  If  poetry,  in  Bacon's  noble  definition  of 
it,  "adapt  the  shows  of  things  to  the  desires  of  the  mind," 
sentimentalism  is  equally  skilful  in  making  realities 
shape  themselves  to  the  cravings  of  vanity.  The  theory 
that  the  poet  is  a  being  above  the  world  and  apart  from 
it  is  true  of  him  as  an  observer  only  who  applies  to  the 
phenomena  about  him  the  test  of  a  finer  and  more  spirit 
ual  sense.  That  he  is  a  creature  divinely  set  apart  from 
his  fellow-men  by  a  mental  organization  that  makes 
them  mutually  unintelligible  to  each  other,  is  in  flat 
contradiction  with  the  lives  of  those  poets  universally 
acknowledged  as  greatest.  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Cer 
vantes,  Calderon,  Milton,  Moliere,  Goethe,  —  in  what 
conceivable  sense  is  it  true  of  them  that  they  wanted 
the  manly  qualities  which  made  them  equal  to  the 
demands  of  the  world  in  which  they  lived  ]  That  a  poet 
should  assume,  as  Victor  Hugo  used  to  do,  that  he  is  a 
reorganizer  of  the  moral  world,  and  that  works  cunningly 
adapted  to  the  popular  whim  of  the  time  form  part  of 
some  mysterious  system  which  is  to  give  us  a  new  heaven 
and  a  new  earth,  and  to  remodel  laws  of  art  which  are 
as  unchangeable  as  those  of  astronomy,  can  do  no  very 
great  harm  to  any  one  but  the  author  himself,  who  will 
thereby  be  led  astray  from  his  proper  function,  and  from 
the  only  path  to  legitimate  and  lasting  success.  But 
when  the  theory  is  earned  a  step  further,  and  we  are 
asked  to  believe,  as  in  Percival's  case,  that,  because 
a  man  can  write  verses,  he  is  exempt  from  that  inexora 
ble  logic  of  life  and  circumstance  to  which  all  other  men 
are  subjected,  and  to  which  it  is  wholesome  for  them 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL.     189 

that  they  should  be,  then  it  becomes  mischievous,  and 
'  calls  for  a  protest  from  all  those  who  have  at  heart  the 
interests  of  good  morals  and  healthy  literature.  It  is 
the  theory  of  idlers  and  dilettanti,  of  fribbles  in  morals 
and  declaimers  in  verse,  which  a  young  man  of  real 
power  may  dally  with  during  some  fit  of  mental  indiges 
tion,  but  which  when  accepted  by  a  mature  man,  and 
cai'ried  along  with  him  through  life,  is  a  sure  mark 
of  feebleness  and  of  insincere  dealing  with  himself.  Per- 
cival  is  a  good  example  of  a  class  of  authors  unhappily 
too  numerous  in  these  latter  days.  In  Europe  the 
natural  growth  of  a  world  ill  at  ease  with  itself  and  still 
nervous  with  the  frightful  palpitation  of  the  French 
Revolution,  they  are  but  feeble  exotics  in  our  healthier 
air.  Without  faith  or  hope,  and  deprived  of  that  out 
ward  support  in  the  habitual  procession  of  events  and  in 
the  authoritative  limitations  of  thought  which  in  ordi 
nary  times  gives  steadiness  to  feeble  and  timid  intellects, 
they  are  turned  inward,  and  forced,  like  Hudibras's 
sword, 

"  To  eat  into  themselves,  for  lack 
Of  other  thing  to  hew  and  hack." 

Compelled  to  find  within  them  that  stay  which  had  hith 
erto  been  supplied  by  creeds  and  institutions,  they  learned 
to  attribute  to  their  own  consciousness  the  grandeur 
which  belongs  of  right  only  to  the  mind  of  the  human 
race,  slowly  endeavoring  after  an  equilibrium  between 
its  desires  and  the  external  conditions  under  which  they 
are  attainable.  Hence  that  exaggeration  of  the  individual, 
and  depreciation  of  the  social  man,  which  has  become  the 
cant  of  modern  literature.  Abundance  of  such  phenom 
ena  accompanied  the  rise  of  what  was  called  Romanti 
cism  in  Germany  and  France,  reacting  to  some  extent 
even  upon  England,  and  consequently  America.  The 
smaller  poets  erected  themselves  into  a  kind  of  guild, 


190    LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL. 

into  which  all  were  admitted  who  gave  proof  of  a  certain 
feebleness  of  character  which  rendered  them  superior  to 
their  grosser  fellow-men.  It  was  a  society  of  cripples 
undertaking  to  teach  the  new  generation  how  to  walk. 
Meanwhile,  the  object  of  their  generous  solicitude,  Avhat 
with  clinging  to  Mother  Past's  skirts,  and  helping  itself 
by  every  piece  of  household  furniture  it  could  lay  hands 
on,  learned,  after  many  a  tumble,  to  get  on  its  legs,  and 
to  use  them  as  other  generations  had  done  before  it. 
Percival  belonged  to  this  new  order  of  bards,  weak  in  the 
knees,  and  thinking  it  healthy  exercise  to  climb  the  peaks 
of  Dreamland.  To  the  vague  and  misty  views  attaina 
ble  from  those  sublime  summits  into  his  own  vast  in 
terior,  his  reports  in  blank  verse  and  otherwise  did  ample 
justice,  but  failed  to  excite  the  appetite  of  mankind.  He 
spent  his  life,  like  others  of  his  class,  in  proclaiming  him 
self  a  neglected  Columbus,  ever  ready  to  start  on  his 
voyage  when  the  public  would  supply  the  means  of 
building  his  ships.  Meanwhile,  to  be  ready  at  a  moment's 
warning,  he  packs  his  mind  pellmell  like  a  carpet-bag, 
wraps  a  geologist's  hammer  in  a  shirt  with  a  Byron  collar, 
does  up  Volney's  "  Ruins  "  with  an  odd  volume  of  Words 
worth,  and  another  of  Bell's  "  Anatomy  "  in  a  loose  sheet 
of  Webster's  Dictionary,  jams  Moore's  poems  between  the 
leaves  of  Bopp's  Grammer,  —  and  forgets  only  such  small 
matters  as  combs  and  brushes.  It  never  seems  to  have 
entered  his  head  that  the  gulf  between  genius  and  its 
new  world  is  never  too  wide  for  a  stout  swimmer.  Like 
all  sentimentalists,  he  reversed-  the  process  of  nature, 
which  makes  it  a  part  of  greatness  that  it  is  a  simple 
thing  to  itself,  however  much  of  a  marvel  it  may  be  to 
other  men.  He  discovered  his  own  genius,  as  he  sup 
posed,  —  a  thing  impossible  had  the  genius  been  real. 
.Donne  never  wrote  a  profounder  verse  than 

"  Who  knows  Ms  virtue's  name  and  place,  hath  none." 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL.     191 

Percival's  life  was  by  no  means  a  remarkable  one,  ex 
cept,  perhaps,  in  the  number  of  chances  that  seem  to 
have  been  offered  him  to  make  something  of  himself, 
if  anything  were  possibly  to  be  made.  He  was  never 
without  friends,  never  without  opportunities,  if  he  could 
have  availed  himself  of  them.  It  is  pleasant  to  see 
Mr.  Ticknor  treating  him  with  that  considerate  kindness 
which  many  a  young  scholar  can  remember  as  shown  so 
generously  to  himself.  But  nothing  could  help  Percival, 
whose  nature  had  defeat  worked  into  its  very  composition. 
He  was  not  a  real,  but  an  imaginary  man.  His  early 
attempt  at  suicide  (as  Mr.  Ward  seems  to  think  it)  is 
typical  of  him.  He  is  not  the  first  young  man  who,  when 
crossed  in  love,  has  spoken  of  "  loupin  o'er  a  linn,"  nor 
will  he  be  the  last.  But  that  any  one  who  really  meant 
to  kill  himself  should  put  himself  resolutely  in  the  way 
of  being  prevented,  as  Percival  did,  is  hard  to  believe. 
Chateaubriand,  the  arch  sentimentalist  of  these  latter 
days,  had  the  same  harmless  velleily  of  self-destruction, 
—  enough  to  scare  his  sister  and  so  give  him  a  smack  of 
sensation,  —  but  a  very  different  thing  from  the  settled 
will  which  would  be  really  perilous.  Shakespeare,  always 
true  to  Nature,  makes  Hamlet  dally  with  the  same  excit 
ing  fancy.  Alas  !  self  is  the  one  thing  the  sentimen 
talist  never  truly  wishes  to  destroy  !  One  remarkable 
gift  Percival  seems  to  have  had,  which  may  be  called 
memory  of  the  eye.  What  he  saw  he  never  forgot,  and 
this  fitted  him  for  a  good  geological  observer.  How  great 
his  power  of  combination  was,  which  alone  could  have 
made  him  a  great  geologist,  we  cannot  determine.  But 
he  seems  to  have  shown  but  little  in  other  directions. 
His  faculty  of  acquiring  foreign  tongues  we  do  not  value 
so  highly  as  Mr.  Ward.  We  have  known  many  other 
wise  inferior  men  who  possessed  it.  Indeed,  the  power 
to  express  the  same  nothing  in  ten  different  languages  is 


192    LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  JAMES  GATES  PERCIVAL. 

something  to  be  dreaded  rather  than  admired.  It  gives 
a  horrible  advantage  to  dulness.  The  best  thing  to  be 
learned  from  Percival's  life  is  that  he  was  happy  for  the 
first  time  when  taken  away  from,  his  vague  pursuit  of  the 
ideal,  and  set  to  practical  work. 


THOREAU. 


WHAT  contemporary,  if  he  was  in  the  fighting 
period  of  his  life,  (since  Nature  sets  limits  about 
her  conscription  for  spiritual  fields,  as  the  state  does  in 
physical  warfare,)  will  ever  forget  what  was  somewhat 
vaguely  called  the  "  Transcendental  Movement "  of  thirty 
years  ago  1  Apparently  set  astirring  by  Carlyle's  essays 
on  the  "  Signs  of  the  Times,"  and  on  "History,"  the  final 
and  more  immediate  impulse  seemed  to  be  given  by 
"  Sartor  Resartus."  At  least  the  republication  in  Boston 
of  that  wonderful  Abraham  a  Sancta  Clara  sermon  on 
Lear's  text  of  the  miserable  forked  radish  gave  the  signal 
for  a  sudden  mental  and  moral  mutiny.  Ecce  nunc  tern- 
pus  acceptabile  !  was  shouted  on  all  hands  with  every 
variety  of  emphasis,  and  by  voices  of  every  conceivable 
pitch,  representing  the  three  sexes  of  men,  women,  and 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagues.  The  nameless  eagle  of 
the  tree  Ygdrasil  was  about  to  sit  at  last,  and  wild-eyed 
enthusiasts  rushed  from  all  sides,  each  eager  to  thrust 
under  the  mystic  bird  that  chalk  egg  from  which  the  new 
and  fairer  Creation  was  to  be  hatched  in  due  time.  Re- 
deunt  Saturnia  regna,  —  so  far  was  certain,  though  in 
what  shape,  .or  by  what  methods,  was  still  a  matter  of 
debate.  Every  possible  form  of  intellectual  and  physical 
dyspepsia  brought  forth  its  gospel.  Bran  had  its  proph 
ets,  and  the  presartorial  simplicity  of  Adam  its  mar 
tyrs,  tailored  impromptu  from  the  tar-pot  by  incensed 
9  M 


194  THOREAU. 

neighbors,  and  sent  forth  to  illustrate  the  "  feathered 
Mercury,"  as  defined  by  Webster  and  Worcester.  Plain 
ness  of  speech  was  carried  to  a  pitch  that  would  have 
taken  away  the  breath  of  George  Fox  ;  and  even  swear 
ing  had  its  evangelists,  who  answered  a  simple  inquiry 
after  their  health  with  an  elaborate  ingenuity  of  impre 
cation  that  might  have  been  honorably  mentioned  by 
Marlborough  in  general  orders.  Everybody  had  a  mis 
sion  (with  a  capital  M)  to  attend  to  everybody-else's 
business.  No  brain  but  had  its  private  maggot,  which 
must  have  found  pitiably  short  commons  sometimes.  Not 
a  few  impecunious  zealots  abjured  the  use  of  money  (un 
less  earned  by  other  people),  professing  to  live  on  the 
internal  revenues  of  the  spirit.  Some  had  an  assurance 
of  instant  millennium  so  soon  as  hooks  and  eyes  should  be 
substituted  for  buttons.  Communities  were  established 
where  everything  was  to  be  common  but  common-sense. 
Men  renounced  their  old  gods,  and  hesitated  only  whether 
to  bestow  their  furloughed  allegiance  on  Thor  or  Budh. 
Conventions  were  held  for  every  hitherto  inconceivable 
purpose.  The  belated  gift  of  tongues,  as  among  the  Fifth 
Monarchy  men,  spread  like  a  contagion,  rendering  its 
victims  incomprehensible  to  all  Christian  men  ;  whether 
equally  so  to  the  most  distant  possible  heathen  or  not 
was  nnexperimented,  though  many  would  have  sub 
scribed  liberally  that  a  fair  trial  might  be  made.  It  was 
the  pentecost  of  Shinar.  The  day  of  utterances  repro 
duced  the  day  of  rebuses  and  anagrams,  and  there  was 
nothing  so  simple  that  uncial  letters  and  the  style  of 
Diphilus  the  Labyrinth  could  not  turn  into  a  riddle. 
Many  foreign  revolutionists  out  of  work  added  to  the 
general  misunderstanding  their  contribution  of  broken 
English  in  every  most  ingenious  form  of  fracture.  All 
stood  ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to  reform  everything 
but  themselves.  The  general  motto  was  :  — 


THOREAU.  195 

"  And  we  '11  talk  with  them,  too, 
And  take  upon  's  the  mystery  of  things 
As  if  we  were  God's  spies." 

Nature  is  always  kind  enough  to  give  even  her  clouds 
a  humorous  lining.  We  have  barely  hinted  at  the  comic 
side  of  the  affair,  for  the  material  was  endless.  This  was 
the  whistle  and  trailing  fuse  of  the  shell,  but  there  was 
a  very  solid  and  serious  kernel,  full  of  the  most  deadly 
explosiveness.  Thoughtful  men  divined  it,  but  the  gen 
erality  suspected  nothing.  The  word  "  transcendental  " 
then  was  the  maid  of  all  work  for  those  who  could  not 
think,  as  "  Pre-Raphaelite  "  has  been  more  recently  for 
people  of  the  same  limited  housekeeping.  The  truth  is, 
that  there  was  a  much  nearer  metaphysical  relation  and 
a  much  more  distant  aesthetic  and  literary  relation  be 
tween  Carlyle  and  the  Apostles  of  the  Newness,  as  they 
were  called  in  New  England,  than  has  commonly  been 
supposed.  Both  represented  the  reaction  and  revolt 
against  Philisterei,  a  renewal  of  the  old  battle  begun  in 
modern  times  by  Erasmus  and  Reuchlin,  and  continued 
by  Lessing,  Goethe,  and,  in  a  far  narrower  sense,  by 
Heine  in  Germany,  and  of  which  Fielding,  Sterne,  and 
Wordsworth  in  different  ways  have  been  the  leaders  in 
England.  It  was  simply  a  struggle  for  fresh  air,  in  which, 
if  the  windows  could  not  be  opened,  there  was  danger 
that  panes  would  be  broken,  though  painted  with  images 
of  saints  and  martyrs.  Light  colored  by  these  reverend 
effigies  was  none  the  more  respirable  for  being  pictu 
resque.  There  is  only  one  thing  better  than  tradition,  and 
that  is  the  original  and  eternal  life  out  of  which  all  tra 
dition  takes  its  rise.  It  was  this  life  which  the  reformers 
demanded,  with  more  or  less  clearness  of  consciousness 
and  expression,  life  in  politics,  life  in  literature,  life  in 
religion.  Of  what  use  to  import  a  gospel  from  Judaea, 
if  we  leave  behind  the  soul  that  made  it  possible,  the  God 


196  THOREAU. 

\vho  keeps  it  forever  real  and  present  ?  Surely  Abana 
and  Pharpar  are  better  than  Jordan,  if  a  living  faith  be 
mixed  with  those  waters  and  none  with  these. 

Scotch  Presbyterianism  as  a  motive  of  spiritual  prog 
ress  was  dead ;  New  England  Puritanism  was  in  like 
manner  dead ;  in  other  words,  Protestantism  had  made 
its  fortune  and  no  longer  protested;  but  till  Carlyle 
spoke  out  in  the  Old  World  and  Emerson  in  the  New, 
no  one  had  dared  to  proclaim,  Le  roi  est  mort:  vive  le  roi! 
The  meaning  of  which  proclamation  was  essentially 
this  :  the  vital  spirit  has  long  since  departed  out  of  this 
form  once  so  kingly,  and  the  great  seal  has  been  in  com 
mission  long  enough ;  but  meanwhile  the  soul  of  man, 
from  which  all  power  emanates  and  to  which  it  reverts, 
still  survives  in  undiminished  royalty ;  God  still  sur 
vives,  little  as  you  gentlemen  of  the  Commission  seem 
to  be  aware  of  it,  —  nay,  may  possibly  outlive  the  whole 
of  you,  incredible  as  it  may  appear.  The  truth  is,  that 
both  Scotch  Presbyterianism  and  New  England  Puritan 
ism  made  their  new  avatar  in  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  the 
heralds  of  their  formal  decease,  and  the  tendency  of  the 
one  toward  Authority  and  of  the  other  toward  Indepen 
dency  might  have  been  prophesied  by  whoever  had 
studied  history.  The  necessity  was  not  so  much  in  the 
men  as  in  the  principles  they  represented  and  the  tradi 
tions  which  overruled  them.  The  Puritanism  of  the  / 
past  found  its  unwilling  poet  in  Hawthorne,  the  rarest 
creative  imagination  of  the  century,  the  rarest  in  some 
ideal  respects  since  Shakespeare ;  but  the  Puritanism 
that  cannot  die,  the  Puritanism  that  made  New  England 
what  it  is,  and  is  destined  to  make  America  what  it 
should  be,  found  its  voice  in  Emerson.  Though  holding  *' 
himself  aloof  from  all  active  partnership  in  movements 
of  reform,  he  has  been  the  sleeping  partner  who  has 
supplied  a  great  part  of  their  capital. 


THOREAU.  197 

The  artistic  range  of  Emerson  is  narrow,  as  every 
well-read  critic  must  feel  at  once  ;  and  so  is  that  of 
^Eschylus,  so  is  that  of  Dante,  so  is  that  of  Montaigne, 
so  is  that  of  Schiller,  so  is  that  of  nearly  every  one 
except  Shakespeare  ;  but  there  is  a  gauge  of  height  no 
less  than  of  breadth,  of  individuality  as  well  as  of 
comprehensiveness,  and,  above  all,  there  is  the  standard 
of  genetic  power,  the  test  of  the  masculine  as  distin 
guished  from  the  receptive  minds.  There  are  staminate 
plants  in  literature,  that  make  no  fine  show  of  fruit,  but 
without  whose  pollen,  quintessence  of  fructifying  gold, 
the  garden  had  been  barren.  Emerson's  mind  is  emphat 
ically  one  of  these,  and  there  is  no  man  to  whom  our 
aesthetic  culture  owes  so  much.  The  Puritan  revolt  had 
made  us  ecclesiastically,  and  the  Revolution  politically 
independent,  but  we  were  still  socially  and  intellectually 
moored  to  English  thought,  till  Emerson  cut  the  cable 
and  gave  us  a  chance  at  the  dangers  and  the  glories  of 
blue  water.  No  man  young  enough  to  have  felt  it  can 
forget,  or  cease  to  be  grateful  for,  the  mental  and  moral 
midge  which  he  received  from  the  writings  of  his  high- 
minded  and  brave-spirited  countryman.  That  we  agree 
with  him,  or  that  he  always  agrees  with  himself,  is  aside 
from  the  question ;  but  that  he  arouses  in  us  something 
that  we  are  the  better  for  having  awakened,  whether 
that  something  be  of  opposition  or  assent,  that  he 
speaks  always  to  what  is  highest  and  least  selfish  in  us, 
few  Americans  of  the  generation  younger  than  his  own 
would  be  disposed  to  deny.  His  oration  before  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  Society  at  Cambridge,  some  thirty  years 
ago,  was  an  event  without  any  former  parallel  in  our 
literary  annals,  a  scene  to  be  always  treasured  in  the 
memory  for  its  picturesqueness  and  its  inspiration. 
What  crowded  and  breathless  aisles,  what  windows  clus 
tering  with  eager  heads,  what  enthusiasm,  of  approval, 


198  THOREAU. 

what  grim  silence  of  foregone  dissent !  It  was  our  Yan 
kee  version  of  a  lecture  by  Abelard,  our  Harvard  par 
allel  to  the  last  public  appearances  of  Schelling. 

We  said  that  the  Transcendental  Movement  was  the 
protestant  spirit  of  Puritanism  seeking  a  new  outlet  and 
an  escape  from  forms  and  creeds  which  compressed 
rather  than  expressed  it.  In  its  motives,  its  preaching, 
and  its  results,  it  differed  radically  from  the  doctrine  of 
Carlyle.  The  Scotchman,  with  all  his  genius,  and  his 
humor  gigantesque  as  that  of  Rabelais,  has  grown  shrill 
er  and  shriller  with  years,  degenerating  sometimes  into  a 
common  scold,  and  emptying  very  unsavory  vials  of  wrath 
on  the  head  of  the  sturdy  British  Socrates  of  worldly 
common-sense.  The  teaching  of  Emerson  tended  much 
more  exclusively  to  self-culture  and  the  independent  de 
velopment  of  the  individual  man.  It  seemed  to  many 
almost  Pythagorean  in  its  voluntary  seclusion  from  com 
monwealth  affairs.  Both  Carlyle  and  Emerson  were 
disciples  of  Goethe,  but  Emerson  in  a  far  truer  sense ; 
and  wfiile  the  one,  from  his  bias  toward  the  eccentric, 
has  degenerated  more  and  more  into  mannerism,  the 
other  has  clarified  steadily  toward  perfection  of  style,  — 
exquisite  fineness  of  material,  unobtrusive  lowness  of  tone 
and  simplicity  of  fashion,  the  most  high-bred  garb  of 
expression.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  his  thought, 
nothing  can  be  finer  than  the  delicious  limpidness  of  his 
phrase.  If  it  was  ever  questionable  whether  democracy 
could  develop  a  gentleman,  the  problem  has  been  affirma 
tively  solved  at  last.  Carlyle,  in  his  cynicism  and  his 
admiration  of  force  in  and  for  itself,  has  become  at  last 
positively  inhuman ;  Emerson,  reverencing  strength, 
seeking  the  highest  outcome  of  the  individual,  has  found 
that  society  and  politics  are  also  main  elements  in  the 
attainment  of  the  desired  end,  and  has  dra\vn  steadily 
manward  and  worldward.  The  two  men  represent  re- 


THOREAU.  199 

spectively  those  grand  personifications  in  the  drama  of 
^Eschylus,  Bi'a  and  Kparos. 

Among  the  pistillate  plants  kindled  to  fruitage  by  the 
Emersonian  pollen,  Thoreau  is  thus  far  the  most  remark 
able  ;  and  it  is  something  eminently  fitting  that  his 
posthumous  works  should  be  offered  us  by  Emerson,  for 
they  are  strawberries  from  his  own  garden.  A  singu 
lar  mixture  of  varieties,  indeed,  there  is  ;  —  alpine,  some 
of  them,  with  the  flavor  of  rare  mountain  air ;  others 
wood,  tasting  of  sunny  roadside  banks  or  shy  openings 
in  the  forest ;  and  not  a  few  seedlings  swollen  hugely  by 
culture,  but  lacking  the  fine  natural  aroma  of  the  more 
modest  kinds.  Strange  books  these  are  of  his,  and  in 
teresting  in  many  ways,  —  instructive  chiefly  as  showing 
how  considerable  a  crop  may  be  raised  on  a  comparative 
ly  narrow  close  of  mind,  and  how  much  a  man  may 
make  of  his  life  if  he  will  assiduously  follow  it,  though 
perhaps  never  truly  finding  it  at  last. 

We  have  just  been  renewing  our  recollection,  of  Mr. 
Thoreau's  writings,  and  have  read  through  his  six  vol 
umes  in  the  order  of  their  production.  We  shall  try  to 
give  an  adequate  report  of  their  impression  upon  us 
both  as  critic  and  as  mere  reader.  He  seems  to  us  to 
have  been  a  man  with  so  high  a  conceit  of  himself  that 
he  accepted  without  questioning,  and  insisted  on  our 
accepting,  his  defects  and  weaknesses  of  character  as 
virtues  and  powers  peculiar  to  himself.  Was  he  indolent, 
he  finds  none  of  the  activities  which  attract  or  employ 
the  rest  of  mankind  worthy  of  him.  Was  he  wanting 
in  the  qualities  that  make  success,  it  is  success  that 
is  contemptible,  and  not  himself  that  lacks  persistency 
and  purpose.  Was  he  poor,  money  was  an  unmixed 
evil.  Did  his  life  seem  a  selfish  one,  he  condemns  doing 
good  as  one  of  the  weakest  of  superstitions.  To  be  of 
use  was  with  him  the  most  killing  bait  of  the  wily 


/     200  THOREAU. 

tempter  Uselessness.  He  had  no  faculty  of  generaliza 
tion  from  outside  of  himself,  or  at  least  no  experience 
which  would  supply  the  material  of  such,  and  he  makes 
his  own  whim  the  law,  his  own  range  the  horizon  of  the 
universe.  He  condemns  a  world,  the  hollowness  of 
whose  satisfactions  he  had  never  had  the  means  of  test 
ing,  and  we  recognize  Apemantus  behind  the  mask  of 
Timon.  He  had  little  active  imagination ;  of  the  recep 
tive  he  had  much.  His  appreciation  is  of  the  highest 
quality ;  his  critical  power,  from  want  of  continuity  of 
mind,  very  limited  and  inadequate.  He  somewhere  cites 
a  simile  from  Ossian,  as  an  example  of  the  superiority 
of  the  old  poetry  to  the  new,  though,  even  were  the 
historic  evidence  less  convincing,  the  sentimental  melan 
choly  of  those  poems  should  be  conclusive  of  their  mod- 
ernness.  He  had  no  artistic  power  such  as  controls  a 
great  work  to  the  serene  balance  of  completeness,  but 
exquisite  mechanical  skill  in  the  shaping  of  sentences 
and  paragraphs,  or  (more  rarely)  short  bits  of  verse  for 
the  expression  of  a  detached  thought,  sentiment,  or 
image.  His  works  give  one  the  feeling  of  a  sky  full  of 
stars,  —  something  impressive  and  exhilarating  certainly, 
something  high  overhead  and  freckled  thickly  with  spots 
of  isolated  brightness;  but  whether  these  have  any 
mutual  relation  with  each  other,  or  have  any  concern 
with  our  mundane  matters,  is  for  the  most  part  matter 
of  conjecture,  —  astrology  as  yet,  and  not  astronomy. 

It  is  curious,  considering  what  Thoreau  afterwards 
became,  that  he  was  not  by  nature  an  observer.  He 
only  saw  the  things  he  looked  for,  and  was  less  poet 
than  naturalist.  Till  he  built  his  "VValden  shanty,  he 
did  not  know  that  the  hickory  grew  in  Concord.  Till 
he  went  to  Maine,  he  had  never  seen  phosphorescent 
wood,  a  phenomenon  early  familiar  to  most  country 
boys.  At  forty  he  speaks  of  the  seeding  of  the  pine  as 


THOREATJ.  201 

a  new  discovery,  though  one  should  have  thought  that 
its  gold-dust  of  blowing  pollen  might  have  earlier  drawn 
his  eye.  Neither  his  attention  nor  his  genius  was  of 
the  spontaneous  kind.  He  discovered  nothing.  He 
thought  everything  a  discovery  of  his  own,  from  moon 
light  to  the  planting  of  acorns  and  nuts  by  squirrels. 
This  is  a  defect  in  his  character,  but  one  of  his  chief 
charms  as  a  writer.  Everything  grows  fresh  under  his 
hand.  He  delved  in  his  mind  and  nature ;  he  planted 
them  with  all  manner  of  native  and  foreign  seeds,  and 
reaped  assiduously.  He  was  not  merely  solitary,  he 
would  be  isolated,  and  succeeded  at  last  in  almost  per 
suading  himself  that  he  was  autochthonous.  He  valued 
everything  in  proportion  as  he  fancied  it  to  be  exclusive 
ly  his  own.  He  complains  in  "  Walden,"  that  there  is 
no  one  in  Concord  with  whom  he  could  talk  of  Oriental 
literature,  though  the  man  was  living  within  two  miles 
of  his  hut  who  had  introduced  him  to  it.  This  intel 
lectual  selfishness  becomes  sometimes  almost  painful  in 
reading  him.  He  lacked  that  generosity  of  "  communi 
cation  "  which  Johnson  admired  in  Burke.  De  Quincey 
tells  us  that  Wordsworth  was  impatient  when  any  one 
else  spoke  of  mountains,  as  if  he  had  a  peculiar  property 
in  them.  And  we  can  readily  undei-stand  why  it  should 
be  so  :  no  one  is  satisfied  with  another's  appreciation  of 
his  mistress.  But  Thoreau  seems  to  have  prized  a  lofty 
way  of  thinking  (often  we  should  be  inclined  to  call  it  a 
remote  one)  not  so  much  because  it  was  good  in  itself  as 
because  he  wished  few  to  share  it  with  him.  It  seems 
now  and  then  as  if  he  did  not  seek  to  lure  others  up 
"  above  our  lower  region  of  turmoil,"  but  to  leave  his 
own  name  cut  on  the  mountain  peak  as  the  first  climber. 
This  itch  of  originality  infects  his  thought  and  style. 
To  be  misty  is  not  to  be  mystic.  He  turns  common 
places  end  for  end,  and  fancies  it  makes  something  new 


202  THOREAU. 

of  them.  As  we  walk  down  Park  Sti-eet,  our  eye  is 
caught  by  Dr.  Windship's  dumb-bells,  one  of  which 
bears  an  inscription  testifying  that  it  is  the  heaviest 
ever  put  up  at  arm's  length  by  any  athlete;  and  in 
reading  Mr.  Thoreau's  books  we  cannot  help  feeling  as 
if  he  sometimes  invited  our  attention  to  a  particular 
sophism  or  paradox  as  the  biggest  yet  maintained  by 
any  single  writer.  He  seeks,  at  all  risks,  for  perversity 
of  thought,  and  revives  the  age  of  concetti  while  he 
fancies  himself  going  back  to  a  pre-classical  nature.  "  A 
day,"  he  says,  "  passed  in  the  society  of  those  Greek 
sages,  such  as  described  in  the  Banquet  of  Xenophon, 
would  not  be  comparable  with  the  dry  wit  of  decayed 
cranberry-vines  and  the  fresh  Attic  salt  of  the  moss 
's,  beds."  It  is  not  so  much  the  True  that  he  loves  as  the 
Out-of-the-Way.  As  the  Brazen  Age  shows  itself  in 
other  men  by  exaggeration  of  phrase,  so  in  him  by  ex 
travagance  of  statement.  He  wishes  always  to  trump 
your  suit  and  to  ruff  when  you  least  expect  it.  Do  you 
love  Nature  because  she  is  beautiful  1  He  will  find  a 
better  argument  in  her  ugliness.  Are  you  tired  of  the 
artificial  man  ?  He  instantly  dresses  you  up  an  ideal  in 
a  Penobscot  Indian,  and  attributes  to  this  creature  of 
his  otherwise-mindedness  as  peculiarities  things  that  are 
common  to  all  woodsmen,  white  or  red,  and  this  simply 
because  he  has  not  studied  the  pale-faced  variety. 

This  notion  of  an  absolute  originality,  as  if  one  could 
have  a  patent-right  in  it,  is  an  absurdity.  A  man  can 
not  escape  in  thought,  any  more  than  he  can  in  language, 
from  the  past  and  the  present.  As  no  one  ever  invents 
a  word,  and  yet  language  somehow  grows  by  general 
contribution  and  necessity,  so  it  is  with  thought.  Mr. 
Thoreau  seems  to  us  to  insist  in  public  on  going  back  to 
flint  and  steel,  when  there  is  a  match-box  in  his  pocket 
which  he  knows  very  well  how  to  use  at  a  pinch.  Origi- 


THOEEAU.  203 

nality  consists  in  power  of  digesting  and  assimilating 
thought,  so  that  they  become  part  of  our  life  and  sub 
stance.  Montaigne,  for  example,  is  one  of  the  most 
original  of  authors,  though  he  helped  himself  to  ideas  in 
every  direction.  But  they  turn  to  blood  and  coloring  in 
his  style,  and  give  a  freshness  of  complexion  that  is  for 
ever  charming.  In  Thoreau  much  seems  yet  to  be 
foreign  and  unassimilated,  showing  itself  in  symptoms 
of  indigestion.  A  preacher-up  of  Nature,  we  now  and 
then  detect  under  the  surly  and  stoic  garb  something  of 
the  sophist  and  the  sentimentalizer.  We  are  far  from 
implying  that  this  was  conscious  on  his  part.  But  it  is 
much  easier  for  a  man  to  impose  on  himself  when  he 
measures  only  with  himself.  A  greater  familiarity  with 
ordinary  men  would  have  done  Thoreau  good,  by  show 
ing  him  how  many  fine  qualities  are  common  to  the  race. 
The  radical  vice  of  his  theoiy  of  life  was,  that  he  con 
founded  physical  with  spiritual  remoteness  from  men. 
One  is  far  enough  withdrawn  from  his  fellows  if  he  keep 
himself  clear  of  their  weaknesses.  He  is  not  so  truly 
withdrawn  as  exiled,  if  he  refuse,,  to  share  in  their 
strength.  "  Solitude,"  says  Cowley,  "  can  be  well  fitted 
and  set  right  but  upon  a  very  few  persons.  They  must 
have  enough  knowledge  of  the  world  to  see  the  vanity 
of  it,  and  enough  virtue  to  despise  all  vanity."  It  is 
a  morbid  self-consciousness  that  pronounces  the  world 
of  men  empty  and  worthless  before  trying  it,  the 
instinctive  evasion  of  one  who  is  sensible  of  some 
innate  weakness,  and  retorts  the  accusation  of  it  before 
any  has  made  it  but  himself.  To  a  healthy  mind, 
the  world  is  a  constant  challenge  of  opportunity.  Mr. 
Thoreau  had  not  a  healthy  mind,  or  he  would  not 
have  been  so  fond  of  prescribing.  His  whole  life 
was  a  search  for  the  doctor.  The  old  mystics  had  a 
wiser  sense  of  what  the  world  was  worth.  They  or- 


204  THOREAU. 

dained  a  severe  apprenticeship  to  law,  and  even  ceremo 
nial,  in  order  to  the  gaining  of  freedom  and  mastery  over 
these.  Seven  years  of  service  for  Rachel  were  to  be 
rewarded  at  last  with  Leah.  Seven  other  years  of  faith 
fulness  with  her  were  to  win  them  at  last  the  true  bride 
of  their  souls.  Active  Life  was  with  them  the  only  path 
to  the  Contemplative. 

Thoreau  had  no  humor,  and  this  implies  that  he  was 
a  sorry  logician.  Himself  an  artist  in  rhetoric,  he  con 
founds  thought  with  style  when  he  undertakes  to  speak 
of  the  latter.  He  was  forever  talking  of  getting  away 
from  the  world,  but  he  must  be  always  near  enough  to 
it,  nay,  to  the  Concord  corner  of  it,  to  feel  the  impres 
sion  he  makes  there.  He  verifies  the  shrewd  remark  of 
Sainte-Beuve,  "  On  touche  encore  a  son  temps  et  tres- 
fort,  meme  quand  on  le  repousse."  This  egotism  of  his 
is  a  Stylites  pillar  after  all,  a  seclusion  which  keeps  him 
in  the  public  eye.  The  dignity  of  man  is  an  excellent 
thing,  but  therefore  to  hold  one's  self  too  sacred  and 
precious  is  the  reverse  of  excellent.  There  is  something 
delightfully  absurd  in  six  volumes  addressed  to  a  world 
of  such  "vulgar  fellows"  as  Thoreau  affirmed  his  fellow- 
men  to  be.  We  once  had  a  glimpse  of  a  genuine  solitary 
who  spent  his  winters  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  be 
yond  all  human  communication,  and  there  dwelt  with 
his  rifle  as  his  only  confidant.  Compared  with  this,  the 
shanty  on  "\Valden  Pond  has  something  the  air,  it  must 
be  confessed,  of  the  Hermitage  of  La  Chevrette.  We  do 
not  believe  that  the  way  to  a  true  cosmopolitanism 
carries  one  into  the  woods  or  the  society  of  musquashes. 
Perhaps  the  narrowest  provincialism  is  that  of  Self ;  that 
of  Kleinwinkel  is  nothing  to  it.  The  natural  man,  like 
the  singing  birds,  comes  out  of  the  forest  as  inevitably 
as  the  natural  bear  and  the  wildcat  stick  there.  To  seek 
to  be  natural  implies  a  consciousness  that  forbids  all 


THOREAU.  205 

naturalness  forever.  It  is  as  easy  —  and  no  easier  —  to 
be  natural  in  a  salon  as  in  a  swamp,  if  one  do  not  aim  at 
it,  for  what  we  call  unnaturalness  always  has  its  spring 
in  a  man's  thinking  too  much  about  himself.  "  It  is 
impossible,"  said  Turgot,  "  for  a  vulgar  man  to  be  sim 
ple." 

We  look  upon  a  great  deal  of  the  modern  sentimental- 
ism  about  Nature  as  a  mark  of  disease.  It  is  one  more 
symptom  of  the  general  liver-complaint.  To  a  man  of 
wholesome  constitution  the  wilderness  is  well  enough 
for  a  mood  or  a  vacation,  but  not  for  a  habit  of  life. 
Those  who  have  most  loudly  advertised  their  passion  for 
seclusion  and  their  intimacy  with  nature,  from  Petrarch 
down,  have  been  mostly  sentimentalists,  unreal  men, 
misanthropes  on  the  spindle  side,  solacing  an  uneasy 
suspicion  of  themselves  by  professing  contempt  for  their 
kind.  They  make  demands  on  the  world  in  advance 
proportioned  to  their  inward  measure  of  their  own  merit, 
and  are  angry  that  the  Avorld  pays  only  by  the  visible 
measure  of  performance.  It  is  true  of  Rousseau,  the 
modern  founder  of  the  sect,  true  of  Saint  Pierre,  his 
intellectual  child,  and  of  Chateaubriand,  his  grandchild, 
the  inventor,  we  might  almost  say,  of  the  primitive  forest, 
and  who  first  was  touched  by  the  solemn  falling  of  a  tree 
from  natural  decay  in  the  windless  silence  of  the  woods. 
It  is  a  very  shallow  view  that  affirms  trees  and  rocks  to 
be  healthy,  and  cannot  see  that  men  in  communities 
are  just  as  true  to  the  laws  of  their  organization  and 
destiny ;  that  can  tolerate  the  puffin  and  the  fox,  but 
not  the  fool  and  the  knave;  that  would  shun  politics 
because  of  its  demagogues,  and  snuff  up  the  stench  of 
the  obscene  fungus.  The  divine  life  of  Nature  is  more 
wonderful,  more  various,  more  sublime  in  man  than 
in  any  other  of  her  works,  and  the  wisdom  that  is  gained 
by  commerce  with  men,  as  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare 


206  THOEEAU. 

gained  it,  or  with  one's  own  soul  among  men,  as  Dante, 
is  the  most  delightful,  as  it  is  the  most  precious,  of  all. 
In  outward  nature  it  is  still  man  that  interests  us,  and 
we  care  far  less  for  the  things  seen  than  the  way  in 
which  poetic  eyes  like  Wordsworth's  or  Thoreau's  see 
them,  and  the  reflections  they  cast  there.  To  hear  the 
to-do  that  is  often  made  over  the  simple  fact  that  a  man 
sees  the  image  of  himself  in  the  outward  world,  one 
is  reminded  of  a  savage  when  he  for  the  first  time 
catches  a  glimpse  of  himself  in  a  looking-glass.  "  Ven 
erable  child  of  Nature,"  we  are  tempted  to  say,  "to 
whose  science  in  the  invention  of  the  tobacco-pipe,  to 
whose  art  in  the  tattooing  of  thine  undegenerate  hide 
not  yet  enslaved  by  tailors,  we  are  slowly  striving  to 
climb  back,  the  miracle  thou  beholdest  is  sold  in  my 
unhappy  country  for  a  shilling ! "  If  matters  go  on  as 
they  have  done,  and  everybody  must  needs  blab  of  all 
the  favors  that  have  been  done  him  by  roadside  and 
river-brink  and  woodland  walk,  as  if  to  kiss  and  tell 
were  no  longer  treachery,  it  will  be  a  positive  refresh 
ment  to  meet  a  man  who  is  as  superbly  indifferent  to 
Nature  as  she  is  to  him.  By  and  by  we  shall  have  John 
Smith,  of  No. -12  -12th  Street,  advertising  that^  he 
is  not  the  J.  S.  who  saw  a  cow-lily  on  Thursday  last,  as 
he  never  saw  one  in  his  life,  would  not  see  one  if  he 
could,  and  is  prepared  to  prove  an  alibi  on  the  day 
in  question. 

Solitary  communion  with  Nature  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  sanitary  or  sweetening  in  its  influence  on 
Thoreau's  character.  On  the  contrary,  his  letters  show 
him  more  cynical  as  he  grew  older.  While  he  studied 
with  respectful  attention  the  minks  and  woodchucks, 
his  neighbors,  he  looked  with  utter  contempt  on  the 
august  drama  of  destiny  of  which  his  country  was  the 
scene,  and  on  which  the  curtain  had  already  risen.  He 


THOREAU.  207 

was  converting  us  back  to  a  state  of  nature  "so  elo 
quently,"  as  Voltaire  said  of  Rousseau,  "  that  he  almost 
persuaded  us  to  go  on  all  fours,"  while  the  wiser  fates 
were  making  it  possible  for  us  to  walk  erect  for  the  first 
time.  Had  he  conversed  more  with  his  fellows,  his 
sympathies  would  have  widened  with  the  assurance  that 
his  peculiar  genius  had  more  appreciation,  and  his  writ 
ings  a  larger  circle  of  readers,  or  at  least  a  warmer  one, 
than  he  dreamed  of.  We  ha-ve  the  highest  testimony  * 
to  the  natural  sweetness,  sincerity,  and  nobleness  of  his 
temper,  and  in  his  books  an  equally  irrefragable  one  to 
the  rare  quality  of  his  mind.  He  was  not  a  strong 
thinker,  but  a  sensitive  feeler.  Yet  his  mind  strikes  us 
as  cold  and  wintry  in  its  purity.  A  light  snow  has 
fallen  everywhere  in  which  he  seems  to  come  on  the 
track  of  the  shier  sensations  that  would  elsewhere  leave 
no  trace.  We  think  greater  compression  would  have  done 
more  for  his  fame.  A  feeling  of  sameness  comes  over  us 
as  we  read  so  much.  Trifles  are  recorded  with  an  over- 
minute  punctuality  and  conscientiousness  of  detail.  He 
records  the  state  of  his  personal  thermometer  thirteen 
times  a  day.  We  cannot  help  thinking  sometimes  of  the 
man  who 

"  Watches,  starves,  freezes,  and  sweats 
To  learn  but  catechisms  and  alphabets 
Of  unconcerniug  things,  matters  of  fact," 

and  sometimes  of  the  saying  of  the  Persian  poet,  that 
"  when  the  owl  would  boast,  he  boasts  of  catching  mice 
at  the  edge  of  a  hole."  We  could  readily  part  with 
some  of  his  affectations.  It  was  well  enough  for  Py 
thagoras  to  say,  once  for  all,  "When  I  was  Euphorbus 
at  the  siege  of  Troy  "  ;  not  so  well  for  Thoreau  to  trav 
esty  it  into  "  When  I  was  a  shepherd  on  the  plains  of 

*  Mr.  Emerson,  in  the  Biographical  Sketch  prefixed  to  the  "  Excur 
sions." 


208  THOREAU. 

Assyria."  A  naive  thing  said  over  again  is  anything  but 
naive.  But  with  every  exception,  there  is  no  writing 
comparable  with  Thoreau's  in  kind,  that  is  comparable 
with  it  in  degree  where  it  is  best ;  where  it  disengages 
itself,  that  is,  from  the  tangled  roots  and  dead  leaves  of 
a  second-hand  Orientalism,  and  inins  limpid  and  smooth 
and  broadening  as  it  runs,  a  mirror  for  whatever  is  grand 
and  lovely  in  both  worlds. 

George  Sand  says  neatly,  that  "  Art  is  not  a  study  of 
positive  reality,"  (actuality  were  the  fitter  word,)  "but  a 
seeking  after  ideal  truth."  It  would  be  doing  very  inad 
equate  justice  to  Thoreau  if  we  left  it  to  be  inferred  that 
this  ideal  element  did  not  exist  in  him,  and  that  too  in 
larger  proportion,  if  less  obtrusive,  than  his  nature-wor 
ship.  He  took  nature  as  the  mountain-path  to  an  ideal 
world.  If  the  path  wind  a  good  deal,  if  he  record  too 
faithfully  every  trip  over  a  root,  if  he  botanize  somewhat 
wearisomely,  he  gives  us  now  and  then  superb  outlooks 
from  some  jutting  crag,  and  brings  us  out  at  last  into  an 
illimitable  ether,  where  the  breathing  is  not  difficult  for 
those  who  have  any  true  touch  of  the  climbing  spirit. 
His  shanty-life  was  a  mere  impossibility,  so  far  as  his 
own  conception  of  it  goes,  as  an  entire  independency  of 
mankind.  The  tub  of  Diogenes  had  a  sounder  bottom. 
Thoreau's  experiment  actually  presupposed  all  that  com 
plicated  civilization  which  it  theoretically  abjured.  He 
squatted  on  another  man's  land  ;  he  borrows  an  axe  ;  his 
boards,  his  nails,  his  bricks,  his  mortar,  his  books,  his 
lamp,  his  fish-hooks,  his  plough,  his  hoe,  all  turn,  state's 
evidence  against  him  as  an  accomplice  in  the  sin  of  that 
artificial  civilization  which  rendered  it  possible  that  such 
a  person  as  Henry  D.  Thoreau  should  exist  at  all.  Mag- 
nis  tamen  excidit  ausis.  His  aim  was  a  noble  and  a  useful 
one,  in  the  direction  of  "plain  living  and  high  thinking." 
It  was  a  practical  sermon  on  Emerson's  text  that  "  things 


THOEEAU.  209 

are  in  the  saddle  and  ride  mankind,"  an  attempt  to 
solve  Carlyle's  problem  (condensed  from  Johnson)  of 
"lessening  your  denominator."  His  whole  life  was  a 
rebuke  of  the  waste  and  aimlessness  of  our  American 
luxury,  which  is  an  abject  enslavement  to  tawdry  up 
holstery.  He  had  "  fine  translunary  things "  in  him. 
His  better  style  as  a  writer  is  in  keeping  with  the 
simplicity  and  purity  of  his  life.  We  have  said  that 
his  range  was  narrow,  but  to  be  a  master  is  to  be  a  mas 
ter.  He  had  caught  his  English  at  its  living  source, 
among  the  poets  and  prose-writers  of  its  best  days  ;  his 
literature  was  extensive  and  recondite ;  his  quotations 
are  always  nuggets  of  the  purest  ore  :  there  are  sentences 
of  his  as  perfect  as  anything  in  the  language,  and  thoughts 
as  clearly  crystallized  ;  his  metaphors  and  images  are  al 
ways  fresh  from  the  soil ;  he  had  watched  Nature  like  a 
detective  who  is  to  go  upon  the  stand  ;  as  we  read  him, 
it  seems  as  if  all-out-of-doors  had  kept  a  diary  and  be 
come  its  own  Montaigne  ;  we  look  at  the  landscape  as  in 
a  Claude  Lorraine  glass ;  compared  with  his,  all  other 
books  of  similar  aim,  even  White's  "  Selborne,"  seem  dry 
as  a  country  clergyman's  meteorological  journal  in  an  old 
almanac.  He  belongs  with  Donne  and  Browne  and  No- 
valis  ;  if  not  with  the  originally  creative  men,  with  the 
scarcely  smaller  class  who  are  peculiar,  and  whose  leaves 
shed  their  invisible  thought-seed  like  ferns. 


SWINBURNE'S  TRAGEDIES. 


ARE  we  really,  then,  to  believe  the  newspapers  for 
once,  and  to  doff  our  critical  nightcaps,  in  which 
we  have  comfortably  overslept  many  similar  rumors  and 
false  alarms,  to  welcome  the  advent  of  a  new  poet  1  New 
poets,  to  our  thinking,  are  not  very  common,  and  the 
soft  columns  of  the  press  often  make  dangerous  conces 
sions,  for  which  the  marble  ones  of  Horace's  day  were 
too  stony-hearted.  Indeed,  we  have  some  well-grounded 
doubts  whether  England  is  precisely  the  country  from 
which  we  have  a  right  to  expect  that  most  precious  of 
gifts  just  now.  There  is  hardly  enough  fervor  of  political 
life  there  at  present  to  ripen  anything  but  the  fruits  of 
the  literary  forcing-house,  so  fair  outwardly  and  so  flavor 
less  compared  with  those  which  grow  in  the  hardier  open 
air  of  a  vigorous  popular  sentiment.  Mere  wealth  of 
natural  endowment  is  not  enough  ;  there  must  be  also 
the  co-operation  of  the  time,  of  the  public  genius  roused 
to  a  consciousness  of  itself  by  the  necessity  of  asserting 
or  defending  the  vital  principle  on  which  that  conscious 
ness  rests,  in  order  that  a  poet  may  rise  to  the  highest 
level  of  his  vocation.  The  great  names  of  the  last  gen 
eration  —  Scott,  Wordsworth,  Byron  —  represent  moods 
of  national  thought  and  feeling,  and  are  therefore  more 
or  less  truly  British  poets  ;  just  as  Goethe,  in  whose  ca 
pacious  nature,  open  to  every  influence  of  earth  and  sky, 
the  spiritual  fermentation  of  the  eighteenth  century  set 
tled  and  clarified,  is  a  European  one.  A  sceptic  might 


SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES.  211 

say,  we  think,  with  some  justice,  that  poetry  in  England 
was  passing  now,  if  it  have  not  already  passed,  into  one 
of  those  periods  of  mere  art*  without  any  intense  convic 
tions  to  back  it,  which  lead  inevitably,  and  by  no  long 
gradation,  to  the  mannered  and  artificial.  Browning,  by 
far  the  richest  nature  of  the  time,  becomes  more  difficult, 
draws  nearer  to  the  all-for-point  fashion  of  the  concettisti, 
with  every  poem  he  writes  ;  the  dainty  trick  of  Tenny 
son  cloys  when  caught  by  a  whole  generation  of  versi 
fiers,  as  the  style  of  a  great  poet  never  can  be ;  and  we 
have  a  foreboding  that  Clough,  imperfect  as  he  was  in 
many  respects,  and  dying  before  he  had  subdued  his  sen 
sitive  temperament  to  the  sterner  requirements  of  his 
art,  will  be  thought  a  hundred  years  hence  to  have  been 
the  truest  expression  in  verse  of  the  moral  and  intellec 
tual  tendencies,  the  doubt  and  struggle  towards  settled 
convictions,  of  the  period  in  which  he  lived.  To  make 
beautiful  conceptions  immortal  by  exquisiteness  of  phrase, 
is  to  be  a  poet,  no  doubt ;  but  to  be  a  new  poet  is  to  feel 
and  to  utter  that  immanent  life  of  things  without  which 
the  utmost  perfection  of  mere  form  is  at  best  only  wax 
or  marble.  He  who  can  do  both  is  the  great  poet. 

Over  "  Chastelard,  a  Tragedy,"  we  need  not  spend 
much  time.  It  is  at  best  but  the  school  exercise  of  a 
young  poet  learning  to  write,  and  who  reproduces  in  his 
copy-book,  more  or  less  travestied,  the  copy  that  has  been 
set  for  him  at  the  page's  head  by  the  authors  he  most 
admires.  Grace  and  eyen  force  of  expression  are  not 
wanting,  but  there  is  the  obscurity  which  springs  from 
want  of  definite  intention ;  the  characters  are  vaguely 
outlined  from  memory,  not  drawn  firmly  from  the  living 
and  the  nude  in  actual  experience  of  life  ;  the  working 
of  passion  is  an  a  priori  abstraction  from  a  scheme  in  the 
author's  mind ;  and  there  is  no  thought,  but  only  a  ve 
hement  grasping  after  thought.  The  hand  is  the  hand 


212  SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES. 

of  Swinburne,  but  the  voice  is  the  voice  of  Browning. 
With  here  and  there  a  pure  strain  of  sentiment,  a  genuine 
touch  of  nature,  the  effect  of  the  whole  is  unpleasant  with 
the  faults  of  the  worst  school  of  modern  poetry,  —  the 
physically  intense  school,  as  we  should  be  inclined  to  call 
it,  of  which  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Aurora  Leigh  "  is  the  worst 
example,  whose  muse  is  a  fast  young  woman  with  the 
lavish  ornament  and  somewhat  overpowering  perfume  of 
the  demi-monde,  and  which  pushes  expression  to  the  List 
gasp  of  sensuous  exhaustion.  They  forget  that  convul 
sion  is  not  energy,  and  that  words,  to  hold  fire,  must  first 
catch  it  from  vehement  heat  of  thought,  while  no  arti 
ficial  fervors  of  phrase  can  make  the  charm  work  back 
ward  to  kindle  the  mind  of  writer  or  reader.  An  over 
mastering  passion  no  longer  entangles  the  spiritual  being 
of  its  victim  in  the  burning  toils  of  a  retribution  fore 
doomed  in  its  own  nature,  purifying  us  with  the  terror 
and  pity  of  a  soul  in  its  extremity,  as  the  great  masters 
were  wont  to  set  it  before  us ;  no,  it  must  be  fleshly, 
corporeal,  must  "  bite  with  small  white  teeth  "  and  draw 
blood,  to  satisfy  the  craving  of  our  modern  inquisitors, 
who  torture  language  instead  of  wooing  it  to  confess 
the  secret  of  its  witchcraft.  That  books  written  on  this 
theory  should  be  popular,  is  one  of  the  worst  signs  of  the 
times ;  that  they  should  be  praised  by  the  censors  of 
literature  shows  how  seldom  criticism  goes  back  to  first 
principles,  or  is  even  aware  of  them,  —  how  utterly  it 
has  forgotten  its  most  earnest  function  of  demolishing  the 
high  places  where  the  unclean  rites  of  Baal  and  Ashta- 
roth  usurp  on  the  worship  of  the  one  only  True  and  Pure. 
"  Atalanta  in  Calydon  "  is  in  every  respect  better  than 
its  forerunner.  It  is  a  true  poem,  and  seldom  breaks 
from  the  maidenly  reserve  which  should  characterize  the 
higher  forms  of  poetry,  even  in  the  keenest  energy  of 
expression.  If  the  blank  verse  be  a  little  mannered  and 


SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES.  213 

stiff,  reminding  one  of  Landor  in  his  attempts  to  repro 
duce  the  antique,  the  lyrical  parts  are  lyrical  in  the 
highest  sense,  graceful,  flowing,  and  generally  simple  in 
sentiment  and  phrase.  There  are  some  touches  of  nature 
in  the  mother's  memories  of  Althea,  so  sweetly  pathetic 
that  they  go  as  right  to  the  heart  as  they  came  from  it, 
and  are  neither  Greek  nor  English,  but  broadly  human. 
And  yet,  when  we  had  read  the  book  through,  we  felt  as 
if  we  were  leaving  a  world  of  shadows,  inhabited  by  less 
substantial  things  than  that  nether  realm  of  Homer 
where  the  very  eidolon  of  Achilles  is  still  real  to  us  in  its 
longings  and  regrets.  These  are  not  characters,  but  out 
lines  after  the  Elgin  marbles  in  the  thinnest  manner  of 
Flaxman.  There  is  not  so  much  blood  in  the  whole  of 
them  as  would  warm  the  little  finger  of  one  of  Shake 
speare's  living  and  breathing  conceptions.  We  could 
not  help  thinking  of  those  exquisite  verses  addressed  by 
Schiller  to  Goethe,  in  \vhich,  while  he  expresses  a  half- 
truth  so  eloquently  as  almost  to  make  it  seem  a  whole 
one,  he  touches  unconsciously  the  weak  point  of  their 
common  striving  after  a  Grecian  instead  of  a  purely  hu 
man  ideal. 

"  Doch  leicht  gezimmert  nnr  ist  Thespis  Wagon, 
Und  er  ist  gleich  dem  acheront'schen  Kahn; 
Nur  Schatten  und  Idole  kann  er  tragen, 
Und  driingt  das  rohe  Leben  sich  heran, 
So  droht  das  leichte  Fahrzeug  umzuschlagen 
Das  nur  die  fliicht'gen  Geister  fassen  kann; 
Der  Schein  soil  nie  die  Wirklichkeit  erreichen 
Und  siegt  Natur,  so  muss  die  Kunst  entweichen." 

The  actors  in  the  drama  are  unreal  and  shadowy,  the 
motives  which  actuate  them  alien  to  our  modern  modes 
of  thought  and  conceptions  of  character.  To  a  Greek, 
the  element  of  Fate,  with  which  his  imagination  was 
familiar,  while  it  heightened  the  terror  of  the  catastrophe, 
would  have  supplied  the  place  of  that  impulse  in  mere 


214  SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES. 

human  nature  which  our  habit  of  mind  demands  for  its 
satisfaction.  The  fulfilment  of  an  oracle,  the  anger  of 
a  deity,  the  arbitrary  doom  of  some  blind  and  purpose 
less  power  superior  to  man,  the  avenging  of  blood  to 
appease  an  injured  ghost,  any  one  of  these  might  make 
that  seem  simply  natural  to  a  contemporary  of  Sopho 
cles  which  is  intelligible  to  us  only  by  study  and  reflec 
tion.  It  is  not  a  little  curious  that  Shakespeare  should 
have  made  the  last  of  the  motives  we  have  just  men 
tioned,  and  which  was  conclusive  for  Orestes,  insufficient 
for  Hamlet,  who  so  perfectly  typifies  the  introversion 
and  complexity  of  modern  thought  as  compared  with 
ancient,  in  dealing  with  the  problems  of  life  and  action. 
It  was  not  perhaps  without  intention  (for  who  may 
venture  to  assume  a  want  of  intention  in  the  world's 
highest  poetic  genius  at  its  full  maturity  ?)  that  Shake 
speare  brings  in  his  hero  fresh  from  the  University 
of  Wittenberg,  where  Luther,  who  entailed  upon  us  the 
responsibility  of  private  judgment,  had  been  Professor. 
The  dramatic  motive  in  the  "  Electra  "  and  "  Hamlet  " 
is  essentially  the  same,  but  what  a  difference  between 
the  straightforward  bloody-mindedness  of  Orestes  and 
the  metaphysical  punctiliousness  of  the  Dane  !  Yet  each 
was  natural  in  his  several  way,  and  each  would  have 
been  unintelligible  to  the  audience  for  which  the  other 
was  intended.  That  Fate  which  the  Greeks  made  to 
operate  from  without,  we  recognize  at  work  within  in 
some  vice  of  character  or  hereditary  predisposition. 
Hawthorne,  the  most  profoundly  ideal  genius  of  these 
latter  days,  was  continually  returning,  more  or  less 
directly,  to  this  theme;  and  his  "  Marble  Faun,"  whether 
consciously  or  not,  illustrates  that  invasion  of  the  aes 
thetic  by  the  moral  which  has  confused  art  by  dividing 
its  allegiance,  and  dethroned  the  old  dynasty  withoxit 
as  yet  firmly  establishing  the  new  in  an  acknowledged 
legitimacy. 


SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES.  215 

"  Atalanta  in  Calydon  "  shows  that  poverty  of  thought 
and  profusion  of  imagery  which  are  at  once  the  defect 
and  the  compensation  of  all  youthful  poetry,  even  of 
Shakespeare's.  It  seems  a  paradox  to  say  that  there 
can  be  too  much  poetry  in  a  poem,  and  yet  this  is  a 
fault  with  which  all  poets  begin,  and  which  some  never 
get  over.  But  "  Atalanta "  is  hopefully  distinguished, 
in  a  rather  remarkable  way,  from  most  early  attempts, 
by  a  sense  of  form  and  proportion,  which,  if  seconded  by 
a  seasonable  ripening  of  other  faculties,  as  we  may  fair 
ly  expect,  gives  promise  of  rare  achievement  hereafter. 
Mr.  Swinburne's  power  of  assimilating  style,  which  is, 
perhaps,  not  so  auspicious  a  symptom,  strikes  us  as 
something  marvellous.  The  argument  of  his  poem,  in 
its  quaint  archaism,  would  not  need  the  change  of  a 
word  or  in  the  order  of  a  period  to  have  been  foisted  on 
Sir  Thomas  Malory  as  his  own  composition.  The  choos 
ing  a  theme  which  ^Eschylus  had  handled  in  one  of  his 
lost  tragedies  is  justified  by  a  certain  ^Eschylean  flavor 
in  the  treatment.  The  opening,  without  deserving  to  be 
called  a  mere  imitation,  recalls  that  of  the  "Agamemnon," 
and  the  chorus  has  often  an  imaginative  lift  in  it,  an 
ethereal  charm  of  phrase,  of  which  it  is  the  highest 
praise  to  say  that  it  reminds  us  of  him  who  soars  over 
the  other  Greek  tragedians  like  an  eagle. 

But  in  spite  of  many  merits,  we  cannot  help  asking 
ourselves,  as  we  close  the  book,  whether  "Atalanta"  can 
be  called  a  success,  and  if  so,  whether  it  be  a  success  in 
the  right  direction.  The  poem  reopens  a  question  which 
in  some  sort  touches  the  very  life  of  modern  literature. 
We  do  not  mean  to  renew  the  old  quarrel  of  Fontenelle's 
day  as  to  the  comparative  merits  of  ancients  and  mod 
erns.  That  is  an  affair  of  taste,  which  does  not  admit 
of  any  authoritative  settlement.  Our  concern  is  about 
a  principle  which  certainly  demands  a  fuller  discussion, 


216  SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES. 

and  which  is  important  enough  to  deserve  it.  Do  we 
show  our  appreciation  of  the  Greeks  most  wisely  in 
attempting  the  mechanical  reproduction  of  their  forms, 
or  by  endeavoring  to  comprehend  the  thoughtful  spirit  of 
full-grown  manhood  in  which  they  wrought,  to  kindle 
ourselves  by  the  emulation  of  it,  and  to  bring  it  to  bear 
with  all  its  plastic  force  upon  our  wholly  new  conditions 
of  life  and  thought  ?  It  seems  to  us  that  the  question  is 
answered  by  the  fact,  patent  in  the  history  of  all  the  fine 
arts,  that  every  attempt  at  reproducing  a  bygone  excel 
lence  by  external  imitation  of  it,  or  even  by  applying  the 
rules  which  analytic  criticism  has  formulated  from  the 
study  of  it,  has  resulted  in  producing  the  artificial,  and 
not  the  artistic.  That  most  subtile  of  all  essences  in 
physical  organization,  which  eludes  chemist,  anatomist, 
and  microscopist,  the  life,  is  in  aesthetics  not  less  shy  of 
the  critic,  and  will  not  come  forth  in  obedience  to  his 
most  learned  spells,  for  the  very  good  reason  that  it 
cannot,  because  in  all  works  of  art  it  is  the  joint  product 
of  the  artist  and  of  the  time.  Faust  may  believe  he  is 
gazing  on  "  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships," 
but  Mephistopheles  knows  very  well  that  it  is  only 
shadows  that  he  has  the  skill  to  conjure.  He  is  not 
merely  the  spirit  that  ever  denies,  but  the  spirit  also  of 
discontent  with  the  present,  that  material  in  which  every 
man  shall  work  who  will  achieve  realities  and  not  their 
hollow  semblance.  The  true  anachronism,  in  our  opin 
ion,  is  not  in  Shakespeare's  making  Ulysses  talk  as  Lord 
Bacon  might,  but  in  attempting  to  make  him  speak  in  a 
dialect  of  thought  utterly  dead  to  all  present  compre 
hension.  Ulysses  was  the  type  of  long-headedness ;  and 
the  statecraft  of  an  Ithacan  cateran  would  have  seemed 
as  childish  to  the  age  of  Elizabeth  and  Burleigh  as  it 
was  naturally  sufficing  to  the  first  hearers  of  Homer. 
Ulysses,  living  in  Florence  during  the  fifteenth  century, 


SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES.  217 

might  have  been  Macchiavelli ;  in  France,  during  the 
seventeenth,  Cardinal  Richelieu ;  in  America,  during  the 
nineteenth,  Abraham  Lincoln,  but  not  Ulysses.  Truth 
to  nature  can  be  reached  ideally,  never  historically ; 
it  must  be  a  study  from  the  life,  and  not  from  the  scho 
liasts.  Theocritus  lets  us  into  the  secret  of  his  good 
poetry,  when  he  makes  Daphnis  tell  us  that  he  preferred 
his  rock  with  a  view  of  the  Siculian  Sea  to  the  kingdom 
of  Pelops. 

It  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  the  human  mind,  this 
sorcery  which  the  fiend  of  technical  imitation  weaves 
about  his  victims,  giving  a  phantasmal  Helen  to  their 
arms,  and  making  an  image  of  the  brain  seem  substance. 
Men  still  pain  themselves  ta  write  Latin  verses,  matching 
their  wooden  bits  of  phrase  together  as  childi'en  do  dis 
sected  maps,  and  measuring  the  value  of  what  they  have 
done,  not  by  any  standard  of  intrinsic  merit,  but  by  the 
difficulty  of  doing  it.  Petrarch  expected  to  be  known 
to  posterity  by  his  Africa.  Gray  hoped  to  make  a  Latin 
poem  his  monument.  Goethe,  who  was  classic  in  the 
only  way  it  is  now  possible  to  be  classic,  in  his  "  Her 
mann  and  Dorothea,"  and  at  least  Propertian  in  his 
"Roman  Idyls,"  wasted  his  time  and  thwarted  his  crea 
tive  energy  on  the  mechanical  mock-antique  of  an  un 
readable  "  Achilleis."  Landor  prized  his  waxen  "  Ge- 
birus  Rex "  above  all  the  natural  fruits  of  his  mind ; 
and  we  have  no  doubt  that,  if  some  philosopher  should 
succeed  in  accomplishing  Paracelsus's  problem  of  an 
artificial  homunculus,  he  would  dote  on  this  misbegotten 
babe  of  his  science,  and  think  him  the  only  genius  of  the 
family.  We  cannot  over-estimate  the  value  of  some  of 
the  ancient  classics,  but  a  certain  amount  of  superstition 
about  Greek  and  Latin  has  come  down  to  us  from  the 
revival  of  learning,  and  seems  to  hold  in  mortmain  the 
intellects  of  whoever  has,  at  some  time,  got  a  smattering 
10 


218  SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES. 

of  them.  Men  quote  a  platitude  in  either  of  those 
tongues  with  a  relish  of  conviction  as  droll  to  the  un 
initiated  as  the  knighthood  of  free-masonry.  Horace 
Walpole's  nephew,  the  Earl  of  Orford,  when  he  was  in 
his  cups,  used  to  have  Statius  read  aloud  to  him  every 
night  for  two  hours  by  a  tipsy  tradesman,  whose  hic- 
cupings  threw  in  here  and  there  a  kind  of  caesural  pause, 
and  found  some  strange  mystery  of  sweetness  in  the  dis- 
quantitied  syllables.  So  powerful  is  this  hallucination 
that  we  can  conceive  offestina  lente  as  the  favorite  maxim 
of  a  Mississippi  steamboat  captain,  and  apia-rov  p.tv  v8up 
cited  as  conclusive  by  a  gentleman  for  whom  the  bottle 
before  him  reversed  the  wonder  of  the  stereoscope,  and 
substituted  the  Gascon  v  for  the  b  in  binocular. 

Something  of  this  singular  superstition  has  infected  the 
minds  of  those*who  confound  the  laws  of  conventional 
limitation  which  governed  the  practice  of  Greek  authors 
in  dramatic  composition — laws  adapted  to  the  habits 
and  traditions  and  preconceptions  of  their  audience  — 
with  that  sense  of  ideal  form  which  made  the  Greeks 
masters  in  art  to  all  succeeding  generations.  Aristoph 
anes  is  beyond  question  the  highest  type  of  pure  comedy, 
etherealizing  his  humor  by  the  infusion,  or  intensifying 
it  by  the  contrast  of  poetry,  and  deodorizing  the  person 
ality  of  his  sarcasm  by  a  sprinkle  from  the  clearest 
springs  of  fancy.  His  satire,  aimed  as  it  was  at  typical 
characteristics,  is  as  fresh  as  ever ;  but  we  doubt  whether 
an  Aristophanic  drama,  retaining  its  exact  form,  but 
adapted  to  present  events  and  personages,  would  keep 
the  stage  as  it  is  kept  by  "  The  Rivals,"  for  example, 
immeasurably  inferior  as  that  is  in  every  element  of 
genius  except  the  prime  one  of  liveliness.  Something 
similar  in  purpose  to  the  parabasis  was  essayed  in  one, 
at  least,  of  the  comedies  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and 
in  our  time  by  Tieck  ;  but  it  took,  of  necessity,  a  differ- 


SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES.  219 

ent  form  of  expression,  and  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
successful.  Indeed,  the  fact  that  what  is  called  the 
legitimate  drama  of  modern  times  in  England,  Spain, 
and  France  has  been  strictly  a  growth,  and  not  a  manu 
facture,  that  in  each  country  it  took  a  different  form, 
and  that,  in  all,  the  period  of  its  culminating  and  be 
ginning  to  decline  might  be  measured  by  a  generation, 
seems  to  point  us  toward  some  natural  and  inevitable 
law  of  human  nature,  and  to  show  that,  while  the  prin 
ciples  of  art  are  immutable,  their  application  must  ac 
commodate  itself  to  the  material  supplied  them  by  the 
time  and  by  the  national  character  and  traditions.  The 
Spanish  tragedy  inclines  more  toward  the  lyrical,  the 
French  toward  the  epical,  the  English  toward  the  histor 
ical,  in  the  representation  of  real  life  ;  the  Spanish  and 
English  agree  in  the  Teutonic  peculiarity  of  admitting 
the  humorous  offset  of  the  clown,  though  in  the  one 
case  he  parodies  the  leading  motive  of  the  drama,  and 
represents  the  self-consciousness  of  the  dramatist,  while 
in  the  other  he  heightens  the  tragic  effect  by  contrast, 
(as  in  the  grave-digging  scene  of  Hamlet,)  and  suggests 
that  stolid  but  wholesome  indifference  of  the  general 
life  —  of  what,  for  want  of  a  better  term,  we  call  Nature 
—  to  the  sin  and  suffering,  the  weakness  and  misfortunes 
of  the  individual  man.  All  these  nations  had  the  same 
ancient  examples  before  them,  had  the  same  reverence 
for  antiquity,  yet  they  involuntarily  deviated,  more  or 
less  happily,  into  originality,  success,  and  the  freedom 
of  a  living  creativeness.  The  higher  kinds  of  literature, 
the  only  kinds  that  live  on  because  they  had  life  at  the 
start,  are  not,  then,  it  should  seem,  the  fabric  of  scholar 
ship,  of  criticism,  diligently  studying  and  as  diligently 
copying  the  best  models,  but  are  much  rather  born  of 
some  genetic  principle  in  the  character  of  the  people  and 
the  age  which  produce  them.  One  drop  of  ruddy  human 


220  SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES. 

blood  puts  more  life  into  the  veins  of  a  poem,  than  all 
the  delusive  aurum  potabile  that  can  be  distilled  out  of 
the  choicest  library. 

The  opera  is  the  closest  approach  we  have  to  the 
ancient  drama  in  the  essentials  of  structure  and  presen 
tation  ;  and  could  we  have  a  libretto  founded  on  a 
national  legend  and  written  by  one  man  of  genius  to  be 
filled  oiit  and  accompanied  by  the  music  of  another,  we 
might  hope  for  something  of  the  same  effect  upon  the 
stage.  But  themes  of  universal  familiarity  and  interest 
are  rare,  —  Don  Giovanni  and  Faust,  perhaps,  most 
nearly,  though  not  entirely,  fulfilling  the  required  con 
ditions,  —  and  men  of  genixis  rarer.  The  oratorio  seeks 
to  evade  the  difficulty  by  choosing  Scriptural  subjects, 
and  it  may  certainly  be  questioned  whether  the  day  of 
popular  mythology,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  subserves 
the  purposes  of  epic  or  dramatic  poetry,  be  not  gone  by 
forever.  Longfellow  is  driven  to  take  refuge  among  the 
red  men,  and  Tennyson  in  the  Cambro-Breton  cyclus  of 
Arthur;  but  it  is  impossible  that  such  themes  should 
come  so  intimately  home  to  us  as  the  semi-fabulous 
stories  of  their  own  ancestors  did  to  the  Greeks.  The 
most  successful  attempt  at  reproducing  the  Greek  trag 
edy,  both  in  theme  and  treatment,  is  the  "  Samson 
Agonistes,"  as  it  is  also  the  most  masterly  piece  of  Eng 
lish  versification.  Goethe  admits  that  it  alone,  among 
modern  works,  has  caught  life  from  the  breath  of  the 
antique  spirit.  But  he  failed  to  see,  or  at  least  to  give, 
the  reason  of  it ;  probably  failed  to  see  it,  or  he  would 
never  have  attempted  the  "  Iphigenia."  Milton  not 
only  subjected  himself  to  the  structural  requirements 
of  the  Attic  tragedy,  but  with  a  true  poetic  instinct 
availed  himself  of  the  striking  advantage  it  had  in  the 
choice  of  a  subject.  No  popular  tradition  lay  near 
enough  to  him  for  his  purpose ;  none  united  in  itself 


SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES.  221 

the  essential  requisites  of  human  interest  and  universal 
belief.  He  accordingly  chose  a  Jewish  mythus,  very- 
near  to  his  own  heart  as  a  blind  prisoner,  betrayed  by 
his  wife,  among  the  Philistines  of  the  Restoration,  and 
familiar  to  the  earliest  associations  of  his  hearers.  This 
subject,  and  this  alone,  met  all  the  demands  both  of 
living  poetic  production  and  of  antique  form,  —  the 
action  grandly  simple,  the  personages  few,  the  pro 
tagonist  at  once  a  victim  of  divine  judgment  and  an  ex 
ecutor  of  divine  retribution,  an  intense  personal  sympa 
thy  in  the  poet  himself,  and  no  strangeness  to  the 
habitual  prepossessions  of  those  he  addressed  to  be  over 
come  before  he  could  touch  their  hearts  or  be  sure  of 
aid  from  their  imaginations.  To  compose  such  a  drama 
on  such  a  theme  was  to  be  Greek,  and  not  to  counterfeit 
it ;  for  Samson  was  to  Milton  traditionally  just  what 
Herakles  was  to  Sophocles,  and  personally  far  more. 
The  "  Agonistes "  is  still  fresh  and  strong  as  morning, 
but  where  are  "  Caractacus "  and  "Elfrida"?  Nay, 
where  is  the  far  better  work  of  a  far  abler  man,  — 
where  is  "  Merope  "  1  If  the  frame  of  mind  which  per 
forms  a  deliberate  experiment  were  the  same  as  that 
which  produces  poetry  vitalized  through  and  through  by 
the  conspiring  ardors  of  every  nobler  passion  arid  power 
of  the  soul,  then  "  Merope  "  might  have  had  some  little 
space  of  life.  But  without  color,  without  harmonious 
rhythm  of  movement,  with  less  passion  than  survived  in 
an  average  Grecian  ghost,  and  all  this  from  the  very 
theory  of  her  creation,  she  has  gone  back,  a  shadow,  to 
join  her  shadowy  Italian  and  French  namesakes  in  that 
limbo  of  things  that  would  be  and  cannot  be.  Mr. 
Arnold  but  retraces,  in  his  Preface  to  "  Merope,"  the 
arguments  of  Mason  in  the  letters  prefixed  to  his  classi 
cal  experiments.  What  finds  defenders,  but  not  readers, 
may  be  correct,  classic,  right  in  principle,  but  it  is  not 


222  SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES. 

poetry  of  that  absolute  kind  which  may  and  does  help 
men,  but  needs  no  help  of  theirs ;  and  such  surely  \\Q 
have  a  right  to  demand  in  tragedy,  if  nowhere  else.  We 
should  not  speak  so  unreservedly  if  we  did  not  set  a 
high  value  on  Mr.  Arnold  and  his  poetic  gift.  But 
"  Merope "  has  that  one  fault  against  which  the  very 
gods,  we  are  told,  strive  in  vain.  It  is  dull,  and  the 
seed  of  this  dulness  lay  in  the  system  on  which  it  was 
written. 

Pseudo-classicism  takes  two  forms.  Sometimes,  as 
Mr.  Landor  has  done,  it  attempts  truth  of  detail  to 
ancient  scenery  and  manners,  which  may  be  attained 
either  by  hard  reading  and  good  memory,  or  at  a  cheaper 
rate  from  such  authors  as  Becker.  The  "  Moretum," 
once  attributed  to  Virgil,  and  the  idyl  of  Theocritus 
lately  chosen  as  a  text  by  Mr.  Arnold,  are  interesting, 
because  they  describe  real  things ;  but  the  mock-antique, 
if  not  true,  is  nothing,  and  how  true  such  poems  are 
likely  to  be  we  can  judge  by  "Punch's"  success  at 
Yankeeisms,  by  all  England's  accurate  appreciation  of 
the  manners  and  minds  of  a  contemporary  people  one 
with  herself  in  language,  laws,  religion,  and  literature. 
The  eye  is  the  only  note-book  of  the  true  poet ;  but  a 
patchwork  of  second-hand  memories  is  a  laborious  futil 
ity,  hard  to  write  and  harder  to  read,  with  about  as  much 
nature  in  it  as  a  dialogue  of  the  Deipnosophists.  Alex 
ander's  bushel  of  peas  was  a  criticism  worthy  of  Aristotle's 
pupil.  We  should  reward  such  writing  with  the  gift  of 
a  classical  dictionary.  Jn  this  idyllic  kind  of  poetry 
also  we  have  a  classic,  because  Goldsmith  went  to  nature 
for  his  "  Deserted  Village,"  and  borrowed  of  tradition 
nothing  but  the  poetic  diction  in  which  he  described  it. 
This  is  the  only  method  by  which  a  poet  may  surely 
reckon  on  ever  becoming  an  ancient  himself.  When  we 
heard  it  said  once  that  a  certain  poem  might  have  been 


SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES.  223 

written  by  Simonides,  we  could  not  help  thinking  that, 
if  it  were  so,  then  it  was  precisely  what  Simonides  could 
never  have  written,  since  he  looked  at  the  world  through 
his  own  eyes,  not  through  those  of  Linus  or  Hesiod,  and 
thought  his  own  thoughts,  not  theirs,  or  we  should  never 
have  had  hint  to  imitate. 

Objections  of  the  same  nature,  but  even  stronger,  lie 
against  a  servile  copying  of  the  form  and  style  of  the 
Greek  tragic  drama,  and  yet  more  against  the  selection 
of  a  Greek  theme.  As  we  said  before,  the  life  we  lead, 
and  the  views  we  take  of  it,  are  more  complex  than 
those  of  men  who  lived  five  centuries  before  Christ. 
They  may  be  better  or  worse,  but,  at  any  rate,  they  are 
different,  and  irremediably  so.  The  idea  and  the  form 
hi  which  it  naturally  embodies  itself,  mutually  sustain 
ing  and  invigorating  each  other,  cannot  be  divided  with 
out  endangering  the  lives  of  both.  For  in  all  real 
poetry  the  form  is  not  a  garment,  but  a  body.  Our 
very  passion  has  become  metaphysical,  and  speculates 
upon  itself.  Their  simple  and  downright  way  of  think 
ing  loses  all  its  savor  when  we  assume  it  to  ourselves 
by  an  effort  of  thought.  Human  nature,  it  is  true,  re 
mains  always  the  same,  but  the  displays  of  it  change ; 
the  habits  which  are  a  second  nature  modify  it  inwardly 
as  well  as  outwardly,  and  what  moves  it  to  passionate 
action  in  one  age  may  leave  it  indifferent  in  the  next. 
Between  us  and  the  Greeks  lies  the  grave  of  their 
murdered  paganism,  making  our  minds  and  theirs  irrec 
oncilable.  Christianity  as  steadily  intensifies  the  self- 
consciousness  of  man  as  the  religion  of  the  Greeks  must 
have  turned  their  thoughts  away  from  themselves  to  the 
events  of  this  life  and  the  phenomena  of  nature.  We 
cannot  even  conceive  of  their  conception  of  Phoibos 
with  any  plausible  assurance  of  coming  near  the  truth. 
To  take  lesser  matters,  since  the  invention  of  printing 


224  SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES. 

and  the  cheapening  of  books  have  made  the  thought  of 
all  ages  and  nations  the  common  property  of  educated 
men,  we  cannot  so  dis-saturate  our  minds  of  it  as  to  be 
keenly  thrilled  in  the  modern  imitation  with  those  com 
monplaces  of  proverbial  lore  in  which  the  chorus  and 
secondary  characters  are  apt  to  indulge,  though  in  the 
original  they  may  interest  us  as  being  natural  and 
characteristic.  In  the  German-silver  of  the  modern  we 
get  something  of  this  kind,  which  does  not  please  us  the 
more  by  being  cut  up  into  single  lines  that  recall  the 
outward  semblance  of  some  pages  in  Sophocles.  Wo 
find  it  cheaper  to  make  a  specimen  than  to  borrow  one. 

CHORUS.  Foolish  who  bites  off  nose,  his  face  to  spite. 
OUTIS.      Who  fears  his  fate,  him  Fate  shall  one  day  spurn. 
CHORUS.  The  gods  themselves  are  pliable  to  Fate. 
OUTIS.      The  strong  self-ruler  dreads  no  other  sway. 
CHORUS.  Sometimes  the  shortest  way  goes  most  about. 
OUTIS.      Why  fetch  a  compass,  having  stars  within? 
CHORUS.  A  shepherd  once,  I  know  that  stars  may  set. 
OUTIS.      That  thou  led'st  sheep  fits  not  for  leading  men. 
CHORUS.  To  sleep-sealed  eyes  the  wolf-dog  barks  in  vain. 

We  protest  that  we  have  read  something  very  like  this, 
we  will  not  say  where,  and  we  might  call  it  the  battle- 
door  and  shuttlecock  style  of  dialogue,  except  that  the 
players  do  not  seem  to  have  any  manifest  relation  to 
each  other,  but  each  is  intent  on  keeping  his  own  bit 
of  feathered  cork  continually  in  the  air. 

The  first  sincerely  popular  yearning  toward  antiquity, 
the  first  germ  of  Schiller's  "  Gb'tter  Griechenland's "  is 
to  be  found  in  the  old  poem  of  Tanhauser,  very  near 
ly  coincident  with  the  beginnings  of  the  Reformation. 
And  if  we  might  allegorize  it,  we  should  say  that  it 
typified  precisely  that  longing  after  Venus,  under  her 
other  name  of  Charis,  which  represents  the  relation  in 
which  modern  should  stand  to  ancient  art.  It  is  the 
grace  of  the  Greeks,  their  sense  of  proportion,  their  dis- 


SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES.  225 

taste  for  the  exaggerated,  their  exquisite  propriety  of 
phrase,  which  steadies  imagination  without  cramping  it, 

—  it  is  these  that  we  should  endeavor  to  assimilate 
without  the  loss  of  our  own  individuality.  We  should 
quicken  our  sense  of  form  by  intelligent  sympathy  with 
theirs,  and  not  stiffen  it  into  formalism  by  a  servile  sur 
render  of  what  is  genuine  in  us  to  what  was  genuine 
in  them.  "A  pure  form,"  says  Schiller,  "helps  and 
sustains,  an  impure  one  hinders  and  shatters."  But  we 
should  remember  that  the  spirit  of  the  age  must  enter 
as  a  modifying  principle,  not  only  into  ideas,  but  into 
the  best  manner  of  their  expression.  The  old  bottles 
will  not  always  serve  for  the  new  wine.  A  principle  of 
life  is  the  first  requirement  of  all  art,  and  it  can  only  be 
communicated  by  the  touch  of  the  time  and  a  simple 
faith  in  it ;  all  else  is  circumstantial  and  secondary. 
The  Greek  tragedy  passed  through  the  three  natural 
stages  of  poetry,  —  the  imaginative  in  ^Eschylus,  the 
thoughtfully  artistic  in  Sophocles,  the  sentimental  in 
Euripides,  —  and  then  died.  If  people  could  only  learn 
the  general  applicability  to  periods  and  schools  of  what 
young  Mozart  says  of  Gellert,  that  "  he  had  written  no 
poetry  since  his  death  " !  No  effort  to  raise  a  defunct 
past  has  ever  led  to  anything  but  just  enough  galvanic 
twitching  of  the  limbs  to  remind  us  unpleasantly  of  life. 
The  romantic  movement  of  the  school  of  German  poets 
which  succeeded  Goethe  and  Schiller  ended  in  extrava 
gant  unreality,  and  Goethe  himself  with  his  enerring 
common-sense,  has  given  us,  in  the  second  part  of  Faust, 
the  result  of  his  own  and  Schiller's  common  striving 
after  a  Grecian  ideal.  Euphorion,  the  child  of  Faust 
and  Helen,  falls  dead  at  their  feet ;  and  Helen  herself 
soon  follows  him  to  the  shades,  leaving  only  her  mantle 
in  the  hands  of  her  lover.  This,  he  is  told,  shall  lift 
him  above  the  earth.  We  fancy  we  can  interpret  the 
10*  o 


226  SWINBURNE'S   TRAGEDIES. 

symbol.  Whether  we  can  or  not,  it  is  certainly  sugges 
tive  of  thought  that  the  only  immortal  production  of 
the  greatest  of  recent  poets  was  conceived  and  carried 
out  in  that  Gothic  spirit  and  form  from  which  he  was  all 
his  life  struggling  to  break  loose. 


CHAUCER,* 


WILL  it  do  to  say  anything  more  about  Chaucer  1 
Can  any  one  hope  to  say  anything,  not  new,  but 
even  fresh,  on  a  topic  so  well  worn  1  It  may  well  be 
doubted ;  and  yet  one  is  always  the  better  for  a  walk  in 
the  morning  air,  —  a  medicine  which  may  be  taken  over 
and  over  again  without  any  sense  of  sameness,  or  any 
failure  of  its  invigorating  quality.  There  is  a  pervading 
wholesomeness  in  the  writings  of  this  man,  —  a  vernal 
property  that  soothes  and  refreshes  in  a  way  of  which  no 
other  has  ever  found  the  secret.  I  repeat  to  myself  a 
thousand  times,  — 

"  Whan  that  Aprile  with  his  showres  sote 
The  droughte  of  March  hath  perced  to  the  rote, 
And  bathed  every  veine  in  swich  licour 
Of  which  vertue  engendered  is  the  flour,  — " 
When  Zephyrus  eek  with  his  swete  breth 
Enspired  hath  in  every  holt  and  heth 
The  tender  croppes,  and  the  yonge  sonne 
Hath  in  the  ram  his  halfe  cors  yronne, 
And  sraale  foules  maken  melodic,''  — 

and  still  at  the  thousandth  time  a  breath  of  uncontami- 

*  Publications  of 'the  Chaucer  Society.     London.     1869-70. 

Etude  sur  G.  Chaucer  considers  comme  imitateur  des  Trouveres.  Par 
E.  G.  SANDRAS,  Agrege'  de  I'Universite.  Paris:  Auguste  Dusand. 
1859.  8vo.  pp.  298. 

Geoffrey  Chaucer'1  s  Canterbury-  Gesckichten,  uebersetzt  in  den  Vers- 
massen  der  Urschrift,  und  durch  Einleitung  und  Anmerkungen  erlduiert. 
VonWiLHELM  HERTZBERG.  Hildburghausen.  1866.  12mo.  pp.674. 

Chaucer  in  Seinen  Beziehungen  zur  i/alienischen  Literatur.  Inaugu 
ral-Dissertation  zur  Erlangung  der  Doct&rwiirde.  Von  ALFOKS  Kiss- 
NER.  Bonn.  1867.  8vo.  pp.  81. 


.228  CHAUCER. 

nate  springtide  seems  to  lift  the  hair  upon  my  forehead. 
If  here  be  not  the  largior  ether,  the  serene  and  motionless 
atmosphere  of  classical  antiquity,  we  find  at  least  the 
seclusum  nemus,  the  domos  placidas,  and  the  oubliance, 
as  Froissart  so  sweetly  calls  it,  that  persuade  us  we  are 
in  an  Elysium  none  the  less  sweet  that  it  appeals  to  our 
more  purely  human,  one  might  almost  say  domestic,  sym 
pathies.  We  may  say  of  Chaucer's  muse,  as  Overbury  of 
his  milkmaid,  "  her  breath  is  her  own,  which  scents  all 
the  year  long  of  June  like  a  new-made  haycock."  The 
most  hardened  roue  of  literature  can  scarce  confront  these 
simple  and  winning  graces  without  feeling  somewhat  of 
the  unworn  sentiment  of  his  youth  revive  in  him.  Mod 
ern  imaginative  literature  has  become  so  self-conscious, 
and  therefore  so  melancholy,  that  Art,  which  should  be 
"  the  world's  sweet  inn,"  whither  we  repair  for  refresh 
ment  and  repose,  has  become  rather  a  watering-place, 
where  one's  own  private  touch  of  the  liver-complaint  is 
exasperated  by  the  affluence  of  other  sufferers  whose  talk 
is  a  narrative  of  morbid  symptoms.  Poets  have  forgot 
ten  that  the  first  lesson  of  literature,  no  less  than  of  life, 
is  the  learning  how  to  burn  your  own  smoke ;  that  the 
way  to  be  original  is  to  be  healthy ;  that  the  fresh  color, 
so  delightful  in  all  good  writing,  is  won  by  escaping  from 
the  fixed  air  of  self  into  the  brisk  atmosphere  of  universal 
sentiments  ;  and  that  to  make  the  common  marvellous, 
as  if  it  were  a  revelation,  is  the  test  of  genius.  It  is  good 
to  retreat  now  and  then  beyond  earshot  of  the  introspec 
tive  confidences  of  modern  literature,  and  to  lose  our 
selves  in  the  gracious  worldliness  of  Chaucer.  Here  was 
a  healthy  and  hearty  man,  so  genuine  that  he  need  not 
ask  whether  he  were  genuine  or  no,  so  sincere  as  quite  to 
forget  his  own  sincerity,  so  truly  pious  that  he  could  be 
happy  in  the  best  world  that  God  chose  to  make,  so  hu 
mane  that  he  loved  even  the  foibles  of  his  kind.  Here 


CHAUCER.  229 

was  a  truly  epic  poet,  without  knowing  it,  who  did  not 
waste  time  in  considering  whether  his  age  were  good  or 
bad,  but  quietly  taking  it  for  granted  as  the  best  that 
ever  was  or  could  be  for  him,  has  left  us  such  a  picture 
of  contemporary  life  as  no  man  ever  painted.  "A  per 
petual  fountain  of  good-sense,"  Dryden  calls  him,  yes, 
and  of  good-humor,  too,  and  wholesome  thought.  He 
was  one  of  those  rare  authors  whom,  if  we  had  met  him 
under  a  porch  in  a  showei*,  we  should  have  preferred  to 
the  rain.  He  could  be  happy  with  a  crust  and  spring- 
water,  and  could  see  the  shadow  of  his  benign  face  in  a 
flagon  of  Gascon  wine  without  fancying  Death  sitting 
opposite  to  cry  Supernaculum  !  when  he  had  drained  it. 
He  could  look  to  God  without  abjectness,  and  on  man 
without  contempt.  The  pupil  of  manifold  experience, 
- —  scholar,  courtier,  soldier,  ambassador,  who  had  known 
poverty  as  a  housemate  and  been  the  companion  of 
princes,  —  his  was  one  of  those  happy  temperaments 
that  could  equally  enjoy  both  halves  of  culture,  —  the 
world  of  books  arid  the  world  of  men. 

"  Unto  this  day  it  doth  mine  herte  boote, 
That  I  have  had  my  world  as  in  my  time !  " 

The  portrait  of  Chaucer,  which  we  owe  to  the  loving 
regret  of  his  disciple  Occleve,  confirms  the  judgment  of 
him  which  we  make  from  his  works.  It  is,  I  think,  more 
engaging  than  that  of  any  other  poet.  The  downcast 
eyes,  half  sly,  half  meditative,  the  sensuous  mouth,  the 
broad  brow,  drooping  with  weight  of  thought,  and  yet 
with  an  inexpiignable  youth  shining  out  of  it  as  from  the 
morning  forehead  of  a  boy,  are  all  noticeable,  and  not  less 
so  their  harmony  of  placid  tenderness.  We  are  struck, 
too,  with  the  smoothness  of  the  face  as  of  one  who  thought 
easily,  whose  phrase  flowed  naturally,  and  who  had  never 
puckered  his  brow  over  an  unmanageable  verse. 

Nothing  has  been  added  to  our  knowledge  of  Chaucer's 


230  CHAUCER. 

life  since  Sir  Harris  Nicholas,  with  the  help  of  original 
records,  weeded  away  the  fictions  by  which  the  few  facts 
were  choked  and  overshadowed.  We  might  be  sorry  that 
no  confirmation  has  been  found  for  the  story,  fathered 
on  a  certain  phantasmal  Mr.  Buckley,  that  Chaucer  was 
'•'  fined  two  shillings  for  beating  a  Franciscan  friar  in 
i^eet  Street,"  if  it  were  only  for  the  alliteration ;  but  we 
refuse  to  give  up  the  meeting  with  Petrarch.  All  the 
probabilities  are  in  its  favor.  That  Chaucer,  being  at 
Milan,  should  not  have  found  occasion  to  ride  across  so 
far  as  Padua,  for  the  sake  of  seeing  the  most  famous  lit 
erary  man  of  the  day,  is  incredible.  If  Froissart  could 
journey  on  horseback  through  Scotland  and  Wales,  surely 
Chaucer,  whose  curiosity  was  as  lively  as  his,  might  have 
ventured  what  would  have  been  a  mere  pleasure-trip  in 
comparison.  I  cannot  easily  bring  myself  to  believe  that 
he  is  not  giving  some  touches  of  his  own  character  in 
that  of  the  Clerk  of  Oxford  :  — 

"  For  him  was  liefer  have  at  his  bed's  head 
A  twenty  booke's  clothed  in  black  and  red 
Of  Aristotle  and  his  philosophic 
Than  robes  rich,  or  fiddle  or  psaltriS : 
But  although  that  he  were  a  philosopher 
Yet  had  he  but  a  little  gold  in  coffer: 
Of  study  took  he  moste  care  and  heed ; 
Not  one  word  spake  he  more  than  was  need : 
All  that  he  spake  it  was  of  high  prudence, 
And  short  and  quick,  and  full  of  great  sentence; 
Sounding  in  moral  virtue  was  his  speech 
And  gladly  would  he  learn  and  gladly  teach." 

That,  himself  as  plump  as  Horace,  he  should  have 
described  the  Clerk  as  being  lean,  will  be  no  objection  to 
those  who  remember  how  carefully  Chaucer  effaces  his 
own  personality  in  his  great  poem.  Our  chief  debt  to 
Sir  Harris  Nicholas  is  for  having  disproved  the  story  that 
Chaucer,  imprisoned  for  complicity  in  the  insurrection  of 
John  of  Northampton,  had  set  himself  free  by  betraying 


CHAUCER.  231 

his  accomplices.  That  a  poet,  one  of  whose  leading 
qualities  is  his  good  sense  and  modei-ation,  and  who 
should  seem  to  have  practised  his  own  rule,  to 

"  Fly  from  the  press  and  dwell  with  soothfastness ; 
Suffice  thee  thy  good  though  it  be  small," 

should  have  been  concerned  in  any  such  political  excesses, 
was  improbable  enough ;  but  that  he  should  add  to  this 
the  baseness  of  broken  faith  was  incredible  except  to 
such  as  in  a  doubtful  story 

"  Demen  gladly  to  the  badder  end." 

Sir  Harris  Nicholas  has  proved  by  the  records  that  the 
fabric  is  baseless,  and  we  may  now  read  the  poet's  fine 

verse, 

"  Truth  is  the  highest  thing  a  man  may  keep," 

without  a  pang.  We  are  thankful  that  Chaucer's  shoul 
ders  are  finally  discharged  of  that  weary  load,  "  The 
Testament  of  Love."  *  The  later  biographers  seem  in 
clined  to  make  Chaucer  a  younger  man  at  his  death  in 
1400  than  has  hitherto  been  supposed.  Herr  Hertzberg 
even  puts  his  birth  so  late  as  1340.  But,  till  more  con 
clusive  evidence  is  produced,  we  shall  adhere  to  the  re 
ceived  dates  as  on  the  whole  more  consonant  with  the 
probabilities  of  the  case.  The  monument  is  clearly  right 
as  to  the  year  of  his  death,  and  the  chances  are  at  least 
even  that  both  this  and  the  date  of  birth  were  copied 
from  an  older  inscription.  The  only  counter-argument 
that  has  much  force  is  the  manifestly  unfinished  condi 
tion  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales."  That  a  man  of  seventy 
odd  could  have  put  such  a  spirit  of  youth  into  those 

*  Tyrwhitt  doubted  the  authenticity  of  "  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf" 
and  "  The  Cuckoo  and  the  Nightingale."  To  these  Mr.  Bradshaw 
(and  there  can  be  no  higher  authority)  would  add  "  The  Court  of  Love," 
the  "Dream,"  the  "  Praise  of  Woman,"  the  "  Eomaunt  of  the  Rose," 
and  several  of  the  shorter  poems.  To  these  doubtful  productions  there 
is  strong  ground,  both  moral  and  cesthetic,  for  adding  the  "  Parson's 
Tale." 


232  CHAUCEB. 

matchless  prologues  will  not,  however,  surprise  those  who 
remember  Dryden's  second  spring-time.  It  is  plain  that 
the  notion  of  giving  unity  to  a  number  of  disconnected 
stories  by  the  device  which  Chaucer  adopted  was  an  after 
thought.  These  stories  had  been  written,  and  some  of 
them  even  published,  at  periods  far  asunder,  and  without 
any  reference  to  connection  among  themselves.  The  pro 
logues,  and  those  parts  which  internal  evidence  justifies 
us  in  taking  them  to  have  been  written  after  the  thread 
of  plan  to  string  them  on  was  conceived,  are  in  every  way 
more  mature,  —  in  knowledge  of  the  world,  in  easy  mas 
tery  of  verse  and  language,  and  in  the  overpoise  of  senti 
ment  by  judgment.  They  may  with  as  much  probability 
be  referred  to  a  green  old  age  as  to  the  middle-life  of  a 
man  who,  upon  any  theory  of  the  dates,  was  certainly 
slow  in  ripening. 

The  formation  of  a  Chaucer  Society,  now  four  cen 
turies  and  a  half  after  the  poet's  death,  gives  suitable 
occasion  for  taking  a  new  observation  of  him,  as  of  a 
fixed  star,  not  only  in  our  own,  but  in  the  European 
literary  heavens,  "  whose  worth 's  unknown  although  his 
height  be  taken."  The  admirable  work  now  doing  by 
this  Society,  whose  establishment  was  mainly  due  to  the 
pious  zeal  of  Mr.  Furnivall,  deserves  recognition  from 
all  who  know  how  to  value  the  too  rare  union  of  accu 
rate  scholarship  with  minute  exactness  in  reproducing 
the  text.  The  six-text  edition  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales," 
giving  what  is  practically  equivalent  to  six  manuscript 
copies,  is  particularly  deserving  of  gratitude  from  this 
side  the  water,  as  it  for  the  first  time  affords  to  Ameri 
cans  the  opportunity  of  independent  critical  study  and 
comparison.  This  beautiful  work  is  fittingly  inscribed 
to  our  countryman,  Professor  Child,  of  Harvard,  a  lover 
of  Chaucer,  "so  proved  by  his  worde's  and  his  werke," 


CHAUCER.  233 

who  has  done  more  for  the  great  poet's  memory  than 
any  man  since  Tyrwhitt.  We  earnestly  hope  that  the 
Society  may  find  enough  support  to  print  all  the  re 
maining  manuscript  texts  of  importance,  for  there  can 
hardly  be  any  one  of  them  that  may  not  help  us  to  a 
valuable  hint.  The  works  of  Mr.  Sandras  and  Herr 
Hertzberg  show  that  this  is  a  matter  of  interest  not 
merely  or  even  primarily  to  English  scholars.  The  in 
troduction  to  the  latter  is  one  of  the  best  essays  on 
Chaucer  yet  written,  while  the  former,  which  is  an  in 
vestigation  of  the  French  and  Italian  sources  of  the 
poet,  supplies  us  with  much  that  is  new  and  worth 
having  as  respects  the  training  of  the  poet,  and  the 
obstacles  of  fashion  and  taste  through  which  he  had  to 
force  his  way  before  he  could  find  free  play  for  his  native 
genius  or  even  so  much  as  arrive  at  a  consciousness 
thereof.  M.  Sandras  is  in  every  way  a  worthy  pupil  of 
the  accomplished  M.  Victor  Leclerc,  and,  though  he  lays 
perhaps  a  little  too  much  stress  on  the  indebtedness  of 
Chaucer  in  particulars,  shows  a  singularly  intelligent 
and  clear-sighted  eye  for  the  general  grounds  of  his 
claim  to  greatness  and  originality.  It  is  these  grounds 
which  I  propose  chiefly  to  examine  here. 

The  first  question  we  put  to  any  poet,  nay,  to  any 
so-called  national  literature,  is  that  which  Farinata 
addressed  to  Dante,  Chi  fur  li  maggior  tui  ?  Here  is  no 
question  of  plagiarism,  for  poems  are  not  made  of  words 
and  thoughts  and  images,  but  of  that  something  in  the 
poet  himself  which  can  compel  them  to  obey  him  and 
move  to  the  rhythm  of  his  nature.  Thus  it  is  that  the 
new  poet,  however  late  he  come,  can  never  be  forestalled, 
and  the  ship-builder  who  built  the  pinnace  of  Columbus 
has  as  much  claim  to  the  discovery  of  America  as  he 
who  suggests  a  thought  by  which  some  other  man  opens 
new  worlds  to  us  has  to  a  share  in  that  achievement  by 


234  CHAUCER. 

him  unconceived  and  inconceivable.  Chaucer  undoubt 
edly  began  as  an  imitator,  perhaps  as  mere  translator, 
serving  the  needful  apprenticeship  in  the  use  of  his 
tools.  Children  leam  to  speak  by  watching  the  lips  and 
catching  the  words  of  those  who  know  how  already,  and 
poets  learn  in  the  same  way  from  their  elders.  They 
import  their  raw  material  from  any  and  everywhere,  and 
the  question  at  last  comes  down  to  this,  —  whether  an 
author  have  original  force  enough  to  assimilate  all  he 
has  acquired,  or  that  be  so  overmastering  as  to  assimi 
late  him.  If  the  poet  turn  out  the  stronger,  we  allow 
him  to  help  himself  from  other  people  with  wonderful 
equanimity.  Should  a  man  discover  the  art  of  trans 
muting  metals  and  present  us  with  a  lump  of  gold  as 
large  as  an  ostrich-egg,  would  it  be  in  human  nature  to 
inquire  too  nicely  whether  he  had  stolen  the  lead  1 

Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  great  poets  are  not 
sudden  prodigies,  but  slow  results.  As  an  oak  profits 
by  the  foregone  lives  of  immemorial  vegetable  races 
that  have  worked-over  the  juices  of  earth  and  air  into 
organic  life  out  of  whose  dissolution  a  soil  might  gather 
fit  to  maintain  that  nobler  birth  of  nature,  so  we  may 
be  sure  that  the  genius  of  every  remembered  poet  drew 
the  forces  that  built  it  up  out  of  the  decay  of  a  long 
succession  of  forgotten  ones.  Nay,  in  proportion  as  the 
genius  is  vigorous  and  original  will  its  indebtedness  be 
greater,  will  its  roots  strike  deeper  into  the  past  and 
grope  in  remoter  fields  for  the  virtue  that  must  sustain 
it.  Indeed,  if  the  works  of  the  great  poets  teach  any 
thing,  it  is  to  hold  mere  invention  somewhat  cheap.  It 
is  not  the  finding  of  a  thing,  but  the  making  something 
out  of  it  after  it  is  found,  that  is  of  consequence.  Ac 
cordingly,  Chaucer,  like  Shakespeare,  invented  almost 
nothing.  Wherever  he  found  anything  directed  to 
Geoffrey  Chaucer,  he  took  it  and  made  the  most  of  it. 


CHAUCER.  235 

It  was  not  the  subject  treated,  but  himself,  that  was 
the  new  thing.  Cela  m'appartient  de  droit,  Moliere  is 
reported  to  have  said  when  accused  of  plagiarism. 
Chaucer  pays  that  "  usurious  interest  which  genius,"  as 
Coleridge  says,  "always  pays  in  borrowing."  The  char 
acteristic  touch  is  his  own.  In  the  famous  passage 
about  the  caged  bird,  copied  from  the  "  Romaunt  of  the 
Rose,"  the  "gon  eten  wormes"  was  added  by  him.  We 
must  let  him,  if  he  will,  eat  the  heart  out  of  the  litera 
ture  that  had  preceded  him,  as  we  sacrifice  the  mulberry- 
leaves  to  the  silkworm,  because  he  knows  how  to  convert 
them  into  something  richer  and  more  lasting.  The 
question  of  originality  is  not  one  of  form,  but  of  sub 
stance,  not  of  cleverness,  but  of  imaginative  power. 
Given  your  material,  in  other  words  the  life  in  which 
you  live,  how  much  can  you  see  in  if?  For  on  that 
depends  how  much  you  can  make  of  it.  Is  it  merely 
an  arrangement  of  man's  contrivance,  a  patchwork  of 
expediencies  for  temporary  comfort  and  convenience, 
good  enough  if  it  last  your  time,  or  is  it  so  much  of  the 
surface  of  that  ever-flowing  deity  which  we  call  Time, 
wherein  we  catch  such  fleeting  reflection  as  is  possible 
for  us,  of  our  relation  to  perdurable  things]  This  is 
what  makes  the  difference  between  ^Eschylus  and  Eurip 
ides,  between  Shakespeare  and  Fletcher,  between  Goethe 
and  Heine,  between  literature  and  rhetoric.  Some 
thing  of  this  depth  of  insight,  if  not  in  the  fullest,  yet 
in  no  inconsiderable  measure,  characterizes  Chaucer. 
We  must  not  let  his  playfulness,  his  delight  in  the  world 
as  mere  spectacle,  mislead  us  into  thinking  that  he  was 
incapable  of  serious  purpose  or  insensible  to  the  deeper 
meanings  of  life. 

There  are  four  principal  sources  from  which  Chaucer 
may  be  presumed  to  have  drawn  for  poetical  suggestion 
or  literary  culture,  —  the  Latins,  the  Troubadours,  the 


236  CHAUCER. 

Trouveres,  and  the  Italians.  It  is  only  the  two  latter 
who  can  fairly  claim  any  immediate  influence  in  the 
direction  of  his  thought  or  the  formation  of  his  style. 
The  only  Latin  poet  who  can  be  supposed  to  have  in 
fluenced  the  spirit  of  mediaeval  literature  is  Ovid.  In 
his  sentimentality,  his  love  of  the  marvellous  and  the 
picturesque,  he  is  its  natural  precursor.  The  analogy 
between  his  Fasti  and  the  versified  legends  of  saints  is 
more  than  a  fanciful  one.  He  was  certainly  popular 
with  the  poets  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  cen 
turies.  Virgil  had  wellnigh  become  mythical.  The 
chief  merit  of  the  Prove^al  poets  is  in  having  been  the 
first  to  demonstrate  that  it  was  possible  to  write  with 
elegance  in  a  modern  dialect,  and  their  interest  for  us  is 
mainly  as  forerunners,  as  indications  of  tendency.  Their 
literature  is  prophecy,  not  fulfilment.  Its  formal  senti 
ment  culminated  in  Laura,  its  ideal  aspiration  in  Bea 
trice.  Shakespeare's  hundred  and  sixth  sonnet,  if,  for  the 
imaginary  mistress  to  whom  it  was  addressed,  we  substi 
tute  the  muse  of  a  truer  conception  and  more  perfected 
utterance,  represents  exactly  the  feeling  with  which  we 
read  Proven9al  poetry  :  — 

"  When  in  the  chronicle  of  wasted  Time 
I  see  descriptions  of  the  fairest  wights 
And  beauty  making  beautiful  old  rhyme 
In  praise  of  ladies  dead  and  lovely  knights, 

I  see  their  antique  pen  -would  have  expressed 

Even  such  a  beauty  as  you  master  now ; 

So  all  their  praises  are  but  prophecies 

Of  this  our  time,  all  yovr  prefiguring, 

And,  for  they  looked  but  with  divining  eyes, 

They  had  not  skill  enough  your  worth  to  sing." 

It  is  astonishing  how  little  of  the  real  life  of  the  time  we 
learn  from  the  Troubadours  except  by  way  of  inference 
and  deduction.  Their  poetry  is  purely  lyric  in  its  most 
narrow  sense,  that  is,  the  expression  of  personal  and 


CHAUCER.  237 

momentary  moods.  To  the  fancy  of  critics  who  take 
their  cue  from  tradition,  Proven<je  is  a  morning  sky  of 
early  summer,  out  of  which  innumerable  larks  rain  a 
faint  melody  (the  sweeter  because  rather  half  divined 
than  heard  too  distinctly)  over  an  earth  where  the  dew 
never  dries  and  the  flowers  never  fade.  But  when  we 
open  Raynouard  it  is  like  opening  the  door  of  an  aviary. 
We  are  deafened  and  confused  by  a  hundred  minstrels 
singing  the  same  song  at  once,  and  more  than  suspect 
that  the  flowers  they  welcome  are  made  of  French  cam 
bric  spangled  with  dewdrops  of  prevaricating  glass. 
Bernard  de  Ventadour  and  Bertrand  de  Born  are  well- 
nigh  the  only  ones  among  them  in  whom  we  find  an 
original  type.  Yet  the  Troubadours  undoubtedly  led 
the  way  to  refinement  of  conception  and  perfection  of 
form.  They  were  the  conduit  through  which  the  failing 
stream  of  Roman  literary  tradition  flowed  into  the  new 
channel  which  mediaeval  culture  was  slowly  shaping  for 
itself.  Without  them  we  could*  not  understand  Petrarca, 
who  carried  the  manufacture  of  artificial  bloom  and  fic 
titious  dew-drop  to  a  point  of  excellence  where  artifice, 
if  ever,  may  claim  the  praise  of  art.  Without  them  we 
could  not  understand  Dante,  in  whom  their  sentiment 
for  woman  was  idealized  by  a  passionate  intellect  and 
a  profound  nature,  till  Beatrice  becomes  a  half-human, 
half-divine  abstraction,  a  woman  still  to  memory  and 
devotion,  a  disembodied  symbol  to  the  ecstasy  of  thought. 
The  Provencal  love-poetry  was  as  abstracted  from  all 
sensuality  as  that  of  Petrarca,  but  it  stops  short  of  that 
larger  and  more  gracious  style  of  treatment  which  has 
secured  him  a  place  in  all  gentle  hearts  and  refined 
imaginations  forever.  In  it  also  woman  leads  her  ser 
vants  upward,  but  it  is  along  the  easy  slopes  of  conven 
tional  sentiment,  and  no  Troubadour  so  much  as  dreamed 
of  that  loftier  region,  native  to  Dante,  where  the  woman 


238  CHAUCER. 

is  subtilized  into  das  Eivig-Weiblicht,  type  of  man's  finer 
conscience  and  nobler  aspiration  made  sensible  to  him 
only  through  her. 

On  the  whole,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  anything  more 
tediously  artificial  than  the  Provencal  literature,  except 
the  reproduction  of  it  by  the  Minnesingers.  The  Tedes- 
chi  lurchi  certainly  did  contrive  to  make  something  heavy 
as  dough  out  of  what  was  at  least  light,  if  not  very  satis 
fying,  in  the  canorous  dialect  of  Southern  Gaul.  But  its 
doom  was  inevitably  predicted  in  its  nature  and  position, 
nay,  in  its  very  name.  It  was,  and  it  continues  to  be,  a 
strictly  provincial  literature,  imprisoned  within  extreme 
ly  narrow  intellectual  and  even  geographical  limits.  It 
is  not  race  or  language  that  can  inflict  this  leprous  isola 
tion,  but  some  defect  of  sympathy  with  the  simpler  and 
more  universal  relations  of  human  nature.  You  cannot 
shut  up  Burns  in  a  dialect  bristling  with  archaisms,  nor 
prevent  Beranger  from  setting  all  pulses  a-dance  in  the 
least  rhythmic  and  imaginative  of  modern  tongues.  The 
healthy  temperament  of  Chaucer,  with  its  breadth  of  inter 
est  in  all  ranks  and  phases  of  social  life,  could  have  found 
little  that  Avas  sympathetic  in  the  evaporated  sentiment 
and  rhetorical  punctilios  of  a  school  of  poets  which,  with 
rare  exceptions,  began  and  ended  in  courtly  dilettantism. 

The  refined  formality  with  which  the  literary  product 
of  Provenge  is  for  the  most  part  stamped,  as  with  a 
trademark,  was  doubtless  the  legacy  of  Gallo-Roman  cul 
ture,  itself  at  best  derivative  and  superficial.  I  think, 
indeed,  that  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  Roman 
literature,  always  a  half-hardy  exotic,  could  ripen  the 
seeds  of  living  reproduction.  The  Roman  genius  was 
eminently  practical,  and  far  more  apt  for  the  triumphs 
of  politics  and  jurisprudence  than  of  art.  Supreme  ele 
gance  it  could  and  did  arrive  at  in  Virgil,  but,  if  I  may 
trust  my  own  judgment,  it  produced  but  one  original 


CHAUCER.  239 

poet,  and  that  was  Horace,  who  has  ever  since  continued 
the  favorite  of  men  of  the  world,  an  apostle  to  the  Gen 
tiles  of  the  mild  cynicism  of  middle-age  and  an  after- 
dinner  philosophy.  Though  in  no  sense  national,  he  was, 
more  truly  than  any  has  ever  been  since,  till  the  same 
combination  of  circumstances  produced  Beranger,  an  ur 
bane  or  city  poet.  Rome,  with  her  motley  life,  her  formal 
religion,  her  easy  morals,  her  spectacles,  her  luxury,  her 
suburban  country-life,  was  his  muse.  The  situation  was 
new,  and  found  a  singer  who  had  wit  enough  to  turn  it 
to  account.  There  are  a  half-dozen  pieces  of  Catullus 
unsurpassed  (unless  their  Greek  originals  should  turn 
up)  for  lyric  grace  and  fanciful  tenderness.  The  sparrow 
of  Lesbia  still  pecks  the  rosy  lips  of  his  mistress,  im 
mortal  as  the  eagle  of  Pindar.  One  profound  imagination, 
one  man,  who  with  a  more  prosperous  subject  might 
have  been  a  great  poet,  lifted  Roman  literature  above 
its  ordinary  level  of  tasteful  common-sense.  The  in 
vocation  of  Venus,  as  the  genetic  force  of  nature,  by 
Lucretius,  seems  to  me  the  one  sunburst  of  purely  poetic 
inspiration  which  the  Latin  language  can  show.  But 
this  very  force,  without  which  neque  fit  Icetum  neque 
amabile  quicquam  was  wholly  wanting  in  those  poets  of 
the  post-classic  period,  through  whom  the  literary  in 
fluences  of  the  past  were  transmitted  to  the  romanized 
provincials.  The  works  of  Ausonius  interest  us  as  those 
of  our  own  Dwights  and  Barlows  do.  The  "  Conquest  of 
Canaan  "  and  the  "  Columbiad  "  were  Connecticut  epics 
no  doubt,  but  still  were  better  than  nothing  in  their 
day.  If  not  literature,  they  were  at  least  memories  of 
literature,  and  such  memories  are  not  without  effect  in 
reproducing  what  they  regret.  The  provincial  writers 
of  Latin  devoted  themselves  with  a  dreary  assiduity  to 
the  imitation  of  models  which  they  deemed  classical, 
but  which  were  truly  so  only  in  the  sense  that  they 


240  CHAUCER. 

•were  the  more  decorously  respectful  of  the  dead  form  in 
proportion  as  the  living  spirit  had  more  utterly  gone  out 
of  it.  It  is,  I  suspect,  to  the  traditions  of  this  purely 
rhetorical  influence,  indirectly  exercised,  that  we  are  to 
attribute  the  rapid  passage  of  the  new  Provencal  poetry 
from  what  must  have  been  its  original  popular  character 
to  that  highly  artificial  condition  which  precedes  total 
extinction.  It  was  the  alienation  of  the  written  from 
the  spoken  language  (always,  perhaps,  more  or  less  ma 
lignly  operative  in  giving  Roman  literature  a  cold-blooded 
turn  as  compared  with  Greek),  which,  ending  at  length 
in  total  divorce,  rendered  Latin  incapable  of  supplying 
the  wants  of  new  men  and  new  ideas.  The  same  thing, 
I  am  strongly  inclined  to  think,  was  true  of  the  language 
of  the  Troubadours.  It  had  become  literary,  and  so  far 
dead.  It  is  true  that  no  language  is  ever  so  far  gone  in 
consumption  as  to  be  beyond  the  great-poet-cure.  Un 
doubtedly  a  man  of  genius  can  out  of  his  own  super 
abundant  vitality  compel  life  into  the  most  decrepit 
vocabulary.  But  it  is  by  the  infusion  of  his  own  blood, 
as  it  were,  and  not  without. a  certain  sacrifice  of  power. 
No  such  rescue  came  for  the  langue  (foe,  which,  it  should 
seem,  had  performed  its  special  function  in  the  devel 
opment  of  modern  literature,  and  would  have  perished 
even  without  the  Albigensian  war.  The  position  of  the 
Gallo-Romans  of  the  South,  both  ethical  and  geographi 
cal,  precluded  them  from  producing  anything  really  great 
or  even  original  in  literature,  for  that  must  have  its  root 
in  a  national  life,  and  this  they  never  had.  After  the 
Burgundian  invasion  their  situation  was  in  many  respects 
analogous  to  our  own  after  the  Revolutionary  War.  They 
had  been  thoroughly  romanized  in  language  and  culture, 
but  the  line  of  their  historic  continuity  had  been  broken. 
The  Roman  road,  which  linked  them  with  the  only  past 
they  knew,  had  been  buried  under  the  great  barbarian 


CHAUCER.  241 

land-slide.  In  like  manner  we,  inheriting  the  language, 
the  social  usages,  the  literary  and  political  traditions  of 
Englishmen,  were  suddenly  cut  adrift  from  our  historical 
anchorage.  Very  soon  there  arose  a  demand  for  a  native 
literature,  nay,  it  was  even  proposed  that,  as  a  first  step 
toward  it,  we  should  adopt  a  lingo  of  our  own  to  be  called 
the  Columbian  or  Hesperian.  This,  to  be  sure,  was  never 
accomplished,  though  our  English  cousins  seem  to  hint 
sometimes  that  we  have  made  very  fair  advances  toward 
it ;  but  if  it  could  have  been,  our  position  would  have 
been  precisely  that  of  the  Provencals  when  they  began  to 
have  a  literature  of  their  own.  They  had  formed  a  lan 
guage  which,  while  it  completed  their  orphanage  from 
their  imperial  mother,  continually  recalled  her,  and  kept 
alive  their  pride  of  lineage.  Such  reminiscences  as  they 
still  retained  of  Latin  culture  were  pedantic  and  rhetor 
ical,*  and  it  was  only  natural  that  out  of  these  they 
should  have  elaborated  a  code  of  poetical  jurisprudence 
with  titles  and  subtitles  applicable  to  every  form  of  verse 
and  tyrannous  over  every  mode  of  sentiment.  The  re 
sult  could  not  fail  to  be  artificial  and  wearisome,  except 
where  some  man  with  a  truly  lyrical  genius  could  breathe 
life  into  the  rigid  formula  and  make  it  pliant  to  his  more 
passionate  feeling.  The  great  service  of  the  Provencals 
was  that  they  kept  in  mind  the  fact  that  poetry  was  not 
merely  an  amusement,  but  an  art,  and  long  after  their 
literary  activity  had  ceased  their  influence  reacted  bene 
ficially  upon  Europe  through  their  Italian  pupils.  They 
are  interesting  as  showing  the  tendency  of  the  Romanic 
races  to  a  scientific  treatment  of  what,  if  it  be  not 
spontaneous,  becomes  a  fashion  and  erelong  an  imperti 
nence.  Fauriel  has  endeavored  to  prove  that  they  were 
the  first  to  treat  the  mediaeval  heroic  legends  epically, 
but  the  evidence  is  strongly  against  him.  The  testimony 

*  Fauriel,  Eistoire  de  la  Gaule  Meridionale^  Vol.  I.  passim. 
11  p 


242  CHAUCER. 

of  Dante  oil  this  point  is  explicit,*  and  moreover  not  a 
single  romance  of  chivalry  has  come  down  to  us  in  a 
dialect  of  the  pure  Provencal. 

The  Trouveres,  on  the  other  hand,  are  apt  to  have 
something  naive  and  vigorous  about  them,  something 
that  smacks  of  race  and  soil.  Their  very  coarseness 
is  almost  better  than  the  Troubadour  delicacy,  because 
it  was  not  an  affectation.  The  difference  between  the 
two  schools  is  that  between  a  culture  pedantically  trans 
mitted  and  one  which  grows  and  gathers  strength  from 
natural  causes.  Indeed,  it  is  to  the  North  of  France  and 
to  the  Trouveres  that  we  are  to  look  for  the  true  origins 
of  our  modern  literature.  I  do  not  mean  in  their  epi 
cal  poetry,  though  there  is  something  refreshing  in  the 
mere  fact  of  their  choosing  native  heroes  and  legends  as 
the  subjects  of  their  song.  It  was  in  their  Fabliaux  and 
Lais  that,  dealing  with  the  realities  of  the  life  about 
them,  they  became  original  and  delightful  in  spite  of 
themselves.  Their  Chansons  de  Geste  are  fine  specimens 
of  fighting  Christianity,  highly  inspiring  for  men  like 
Peire  de  Bergerac,  who  sings 

"  Bel  m'es  can  aug  lo  resso 

Que  fai  1'ausbercs  ab  1'arso, 

Li  bruit  e  il  crit  e  il  masan 

Que  il  corn  e  las  trombas  fan  " ; 
but  who  after  reading  them  —  even  the  best  of  them, 

*  Allegat  ergo  pro  se  lingua  Oil  quod  propter  sui  faciliorem  et  delec- 
tabiliorem  vulgaritatem,  quicquid  redactum  sive  inventum  est  ad  vul- 
gare  prosaicum,  suum  est;  videlicet  biblia  cum  Trojanorum,  Koman- 
orumque  gestibus  compilata  et  Arturi  regis  ambages  pulcherrimse  et 
quamplures  alias  historiae  ac  doctrinoe.  That  Dante  by  prosaicum  did 
not  mean  prose,  but  a  more  inartificial  verse,  numeros  lege  solulos,  is 
clear.  Cf.  Wolf,  Ueber  die  Lais,  pp.  92  seq.  and  notes.  It  has  not,  I 
think,  been  remarked  that  Dante  borrows  his  faciliorem  et  delectabilio- 
rem  from  the  plus  diletable  et  comune  of  his  master  Brunette  Latini. 
t  "  My  ears  no  sweeter  music  know 

Than  hauberk's  clank  with  saddlebow, 
The  noise,  the  cries,  the  tumult  blown 
From  trumpet  and  from  clarion." 


CHAUCER.  243 

the  Song  of  Roland  —  can  remember  much  more  than  a 
cloud  of  battle-dust,  through  which  the  paladins  loom 
dimly  gigantic,  and  a  strong  verse  flashes  here  and  there 
like  an  angry  sword  1  What  are  the  Roman  d'avantures, 
the  cycle  of  Arthur  and  his  knights,  but  a  procession  of 
armor  and  plumes,  mere  spectacle,  not  vision  like  their 
Grecian  antitype,  the  Odyssey,  whose  pictures  of  life, 
whether  domestic  or  heroic,  are  among  the  abiding  con 
solations  of  the  mind  1  An  element  of  disproportion,  of 
grotesqueness,*  earmark  of  the  barbarian,  disturbs  us, 
even  when  it  does  not  disgust,  in  them  all.  Except  the 
Roland,  they  all  want  adequate  motive,  and  even  in  that 
we  may  well  suspect  a  reminiscence  of  the  Iliad.  They 
are  not  without  a  kind  of  dignity,  for  manliness  is  always 
noble,  and  there  are  detached  scenes  that  are  striking, 
perhaps  all  the  more  so  from  their  rarity,  like  the  com 
bat  of  Oliver  and  Fierabras,  and  the  leave-taking  of 
Parise  la  Duchesse.  But  in.  point  of  art  they  are  far 
below  even  Firdusi,  whose  great  poem  is  of  precisely  the 
same  romantic  type.  The  episode  of  Sohrab  and  Rustem 
as  much  surpasses  the  former  of  the  passages  just  alluded 
to  in  largeness  and  energy  of  treatment,  in  the  true 
epical  quality,  as  the  lament  of  Tehmine  over  her  son 
does  the  latter  of  them  in  refined  and  natural  pathos. 
In  our  revolt  against  pseudo-classicism  we  must  not  let 
our  admiration  for  the  vigor  and  freshness  which  are  the 
merit  of  this  old  poetry  tempt  us  to  forget  that  our 
direct  literary  inheritance  comes  to  us  from  an  ancestry 
who  would  never  have  got  beyond  the  Age  of  Iron  but 
for  the  models  of  graceful  form  and  delicate  workman 
ship  which  they  found  in  the  tombs  of  an  earlier  race. 

I  recall  but  one  passage  (from  Jourdain  de  Blaivies) 
which  in  its  simple  movement  of  the  heart  can  in  any 
way  be  compared  with  Chaucer.  I  translate  it  freely, 

*  Compare  Floripar  in  Fierabras  with  Nausikaa,  for  example. 


244  CHAUCER. 

merely  changing  the  original  assonance  into  rhyme. 
Eremborc,  to  save  the  son  of  her  liege-lord,  has  passed- 
off  her  own  child  for  his,  only  stipulating  that  he  shall 
pass  the  night  before  his  death  with  her  in  the  prison 
where  she  is  confined  by  the  usurper  Fromond.  The 
time  is  just  as  the  dreaded  dawn  begins  to  break. 

" '  Gamier,  fair  son,'  the  noble  lady  said, 
'To  save  thy  father's  life  must  thou  be  dead; 
And  mine,  alas,  must  be  with  sorrow  spent, 
Since  thou  must  die,  albeit  so  innocent! 
Evening  thou  shalt  not  see  that  see'st  the  morn! 
Woe  worth  the  hour  that  I  beheld  thee  born, 
Whom  nine  long  months  within  my  side  I  bore! 
Was  never  babe  desired  so  much  before. 
Now  summer  will  the  pleasant  days  recall 
When  I  shall  take  my  stand  upon  the  wall 
And  see  the  fair  young  gentlemen  thy  peers 
That  come  and  go,  and,  as  beseems  their  years 
Run  at  the  quintain,  strive  to  pierce  the  shield, 
And  in  the  tourney  keep  their  sell  or  yield; 
Then  must  my  heart  be  tearswoln  for  thy  sake 
That 't  will  be  marvel  if  it  do  not  break.' 
At  morning,  when  the  day  began  to  peer, 
Matins  rang  out  from  minsters  far  and  near, 
And  the  clerks  sang  full  well  with  voices  high. 
'  God,'  said  the  dame,  '  thou  glorious  in  the  sky, 
These  lingering  nights  were  wont  to  tire  me  so! 
And  this,  alas,  how  swift  it  hastes  to  go ! 
These  clerks  and  cloistered  folk,  alas,  in  spite 
So  early  sing  to  cheat  me  of  my  night! '  " 

The  great  advantages  which  the  langue  d'oil  had  over 
its  sister  dialect  of  the  South  of  France  were  its  wider 
distribution,  and  its  representing  the  national  and  unitary 
tendencies  of  the  people  as  opposed  to  those  of  provin 
cial  isolation.  But  the  Trouveres  had  also  this  superi 
ority,  that  they  gave  a  voice  to  real  and  not  merely 
conventional  emotions.  In  comparison  with  the  Trou 
badours  their  sympathies  were  more  human,  and  their 
expression  more  popular.  While  the  tiresome  ingenuity 
of  the  latter  busied  itself  chiefly  in  the  filigree  of  wire- 


CHAUCER.  245 

drawn  sentiment  and  supersubtilized  conceit,  the  former 
took  their  subjects  from  the  street  and  the  market  as 
well  as  from  the  chateau.  In  the  one  case  language  had 
become  a  mere  material  for  clever  elaboration;  in  the 
other,  as  always  in  live  literature,  it  was  a  soil  from 
which  the  roots  of  thought  and  feeling  unconsciously 
drew  the  coloring  of  vivid  expression.  The  writers  of 
French,  by  the  greater  pliancy  of  their  dialect  and  the 
simpler  forms  of  their  verse,  had  acquired  an  ease  which 
was  impossible  in  the  more  stately  and  sharply  angled 
vocabulary  of  the  South.  Their  octosyllabics  have  not 
seldom  a  careless  facility  not  unworthy  of  Swift  in  his 
best  mood.  They  had  attained  the  highest  skill  and 
grace  in  narrative,  as  the  lays  of  Marie  de  France  and 
the  Lai  de  FOiselet  bear  witness.*  Above  all,  they  had 
learned  how  to  brighten  the  hitherto  monotonous  web  of 
story  with  the  gayer  hues  of  fancy. 

It  is  no  improbable  surmise  that  the  sudden  and  sur 
prising  development  of  the  more  sti'ictly  epical  poetry  in 
the  North  of  France,  and  especially  its  growing  partiality 
for  historical  in  preference  to  mythical  subjects,  were 
due  to  the  Normans.  The  poetry  of  the  Danes  was  much 
of  it  authentic  history,  or  what  was  believed  to  be  so ; 
the  heroes  of  their  Sagas  were  real  men,  with  wives  and 
children,  with  relations  public  and  domestic,  on  the 
common  levels  of  life,  and  not  mere  creatures  of  imagina 
tion,  who  dwell  apart  like  stars  from  the  vulgar  cares  and 
interests  of  men.  If  we  compare  Havelok  with  the  least 
idealized  figures  of  Carlovingian  or  Arthurian  romance, 
we  shall  have  a  keen  sense  of  this  difference.  Manhood 
has  taken  the  place  of  caste,  and  homeliness  of  exaggera 
tion.  Havelok  says,  — 

"  Godwot,  I  will  with  thee  gang 
For  to  learn  some  good  to  get; 

*  If  internal  evidence  may  be  trusted,  the  Lai  de  tEspine  is  not  hers. 


246  CHAUCER. 

Swinken  would  I  for  my  meat; 
It  is  no  shame  for  to  swinken." 

This  Dane,  we  see,  is  of  our  own  make  and  stature,  a 
being  much  nearer  our  kindly  sympathies  than  his  com 
patriot  Ogier,  of  whom  we  are  told, 

"  Dix  pies  de  lone  avoit  le  chevalier." 

But  however  large  or  small  share  we  may  allow  to  the 
Danes  in  changing  the  character  of  French  poetry  and 
supplanting  the  Romance  with  the  Fabliau,  there  can  be 
little  doubt  either  of  the  kind  or  amount  of  influence 
which  the  Normans  must  have  brought  with  them  into 
England.  I  am  not  going  to  attempt  a  definition  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  element  in  English  literature,  for  generaliza 
tions  are  apt  to  be  as  dangerous  as  they  are  tempting. 
But  as  a  painter  may  draw  a  cloud  so  that  we  recognize 
its  general  truth,  though  the  boundaries  of  real  clouds 
never  remain  the  same  for  two  minutes  together,  so  arnid 
the  changes  of  feature  and  complexion  brought  about 
by  commingling  of  race,  there  still  remains  a  certain 
cast  of  physiognomy  which  points  back  to  some  one 
ancestor  of  marked  and  peculiar  character.  It  is  toward 
this  type  that  there  is  always  a  tendency  to  revert,  to 
borrow  Mr.  Darwin's  phrase,  and  I  think  the  general 
belief  is  not  without  some  adequate  grounds  which 
in  France  traces  this  predominant  type  to  the  Kelt,  and 
in  England  to  the  Saxon.  In  old  and  stationary  com 
munities,  where  tradition  has  a  chance  to  take  root,  and 
where  several  generations  are  present  to  the  mind  of  each 
inhabitant,  either  by  personal  recollection  or  transmitted 
anecdote,  everybody's  peculiarities,  whether  of  strength 
or  weakness,  are  explained  and,  as  it  were,  justified  upon 
some  theory  of  hereditary  bias.  Such  and  such  qualities 
he  got  from  a  grandfather  on  the  spear  or  a  great-uncle 
on  the  spindle  side.  This  gift  came  in  a  right  line  from 


CHAUCER.  247 

So-and-so ;  that  failing  came  in  by  the  dilution  of  the 
family  blood  with  that  of  Such-a-one.  In  this  way  a 
certain  allowance  is  made  for  every  aberration  from  some 
assumed  normal  type,  either  in  the  way  of  reinforcement 
or  defect,  and  that  universal  desire  of  the  human  mind 
to  have  everything  accounted  for  —  which  makes  the 
moon  responsible  for  the  whimsies  of  the  weathercock  — 
is  cheaply  gratified.  But  as  mankind  in  the  aggregate 
is  always  wiser  than  any  single  man,  because  its  experi 
ence  is  derived  from  a  larger  range  of  observation  and 
experience,  and  because  the  springs  that  feed  it  drain  a 
wider  region  both  of  time  and  space,  there  is  commonly 
some  greater  or  smaller  share  of  truth  in  all  popular 
prejudices.  The  meteorologists  are  beginning  to  agree 
with  the  old  women  that  the  moon  is  an  accessary  .before 
the  fact  in  our  atmospheric  fluctuations.  Now,  although 
to  admit  this  notion  of  inherited  good  or  ill  to  its  fullest 
extent  would  be  to  abolish  personal  character,  and  with 
it  all  responsibility,  to  abdicate  freewill,  and  to  make 
every  effort  at  self-direction  futile,  there  is  no  inconsid 
erable  alloy  of  truth  in  it,  nevertheless.  No  man  can 
look  into  the  title-deeds  of  what  may  be  called  his  per 
sonal  estate,  his  faculties,  his  predilections,  his  failings, 
- —  whatever,  in  short,  sets  him  apart  as  a  capital  I,  — 
without  something  like  a  shock  of  dread  to  find  how 
much  of  him  is  held  in  mortmain  by  those  who,  though 
long  ago  mouldered  away  to  dust,  are  yet  fatally  alive 
and  active  in  him  for  good  or  ill.  What  is  true  of  indi 
vidual  men  is  true  also  of  races,  and  the  prevailing  belief 
in  a  nation  as  to  the  origin  of  certain  of  its  character 
istics  has  something  of  the  same  basis  in  facts  of  obser 
vation  as  the  village  estimate  of  the  traits  of  particular 
families.  Interdum  vulgus  rectum  videt. 

We  are  apt,  it  is  true,  to  talk  rather  loosely  about  our 
Anglo-Saxon  ancestors,  and  to  attribute  to  them  in  a 


248  CHAUCER. 

vague  way  all  the  pith  of  our  institutions  and  the 
motive  power  of  our  progress.  For  my  own  part,  I 
think  there  is  such  a  thing  as  being  too  Anglo-Saxon, 
and  the  warp  and  woof  of  the  English  national  charac 
ter,  though  undoubtedly  two  elements  mainly  predomi 
nate  in  it,  is  quite  too  complex  for  us  to  pick  out  a 
strand  here  and  there,  and  affirm  that  the  body  of  the 
fabric  is  of  this  or  that.  Our  present  concern  with  the 
Saxons  is  chiefly  a  literary  one  ;  but  it  leads  to  a  study 
of  general  characteristics.  What,  then,  so  far  as  we  can 
make  it  out,  seems  to  be  their  leading  mental  feature  1 
Plainly,  understanding,  common-sense, — a  faculty  which 
never  carries  its  possessor  very  high  in  creative  litera 
ture,  though  it  may  make  him  great  as  an  acting  and 
even  thinking  man.  Take  Dr.  Johnson  as  an  instance. 
The  Saxon,  as  it  appears  to  me,  has  never  shown  any 
capacity  for  art,  nay,  commonly  commits  ugly  blunders 
when  he  is  tempted  in  that  direction.  He  has  made  the 
best  working  institutions  and  the  ugliest  monuments 
among  the  children  of  men.  He  is  wanting  in  taste, 
which  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  he  has  no  true  sense  of 
proportion.  His  genius  is  his  solidity,  —  an  admirable 
foundation  of  national  character.  He  is  healthy,  in  no 
danger  of  liver-complaint,  with  digestive  apparatus  of 
amazing  force  and  precision.  He  is  the  best  farmer  and 
best  grazier  among  men,  raises  the  biggest  crops  and  the 
fattest  cattle,  and  consumes  proportionate  quantities  of 
both.  He  settles  and  sticks  like  a  diluvial  deposit  on 
the  warm,  low-lying  levels,  physical  and  moral.  He  has 
a  prodigious  talent,  to  use  our  Yankee  phrase,  of  staying 
put.  You  cannot  move  him  ;  he  and  rich  earth  have  a 
natural  sympathy  of  cohesion.  Not  quarrelsome,  but 
with  indefatigable  durability  of  fight  in  him,  sound  of 
stomach,  and  not  too  refined  in  nervous  texture,  he  is 
capable  of  indefinitely  prolonged  punishment,  with  a 


CHAUCER.  249 

singularly  obtuse  sense  of  propriety  in  acknowledging 
himself  beaten.  Among  all  races  perhaps  none  has 
shown  so  acute  a  sense  of  the  side  on  which  its  bread 
is  buttered,  and  so  great  a  repugnance  for  having  fine 
phrases  take  the  place  of  the  butyraceous  principle. 
They  invented  the  words  "  humbug,"  "  cant,"  "  sham," 
"gag,"  " soft-sodder,"  "flapdoddle,"  and  other  disen 
chanting  formulas  whereby  the  devil  of  falsehood  and 
xinreality  gets  his  effectual  apage  Satana  ! 

An  imperturbable  perception  of  the  real  relations  of 
things  is  the  Saxon's  leading  quality,  —  no  sense  what 
ever,  or  at  best  small,  of  the  ideal  in  him.  He  has  no 
notion  that  two  and  two  ever  make  five,  which  is  the 
problem  the  poet  often  has  to  solve.  Understanding, 
that  is,  equilibrium  of  mind,  intellectual  good  digestion, 
this,  with  imclogged  biliary  ducts,  makes  him  mentally 
and  physically  what  we  call  a  very  fixed  fact ;  but  you 
shall  not  find  a  poet  in  a  hundred  thousand  square  miles, 
—  in  many  prosperous  centuries  of  such.  But  one 
element  of  incalculable  importance  we  have  not  men 
tioned.  In  this  homely  nature,  the  idea  of  God,  and  of 
a  simple  and  direct  relation  between  the  All-Father  and 
his  children,  is  deeply  rooted.  There,  above  all,  will  he 
have  honesty  and  simplicity ;  less  than  anything  else 
will  he  have  the  sacramental  wafer,  —  that  beautiful 
emblem  of  our  dependence  on  Him  who  giveth  the  daily 
bread  ;-  less  than  anything  will  he  have  this  smeared 
with  that  Barmecide  butter  of  fair  words.  This  is  the 
lovely  and  noble  side  of  his  character.  Indignation  at 
this  will  make  him  forget  crops  and  cattle ;  and  this, 
after  so  many  centuries,  will  give  him  at  last  a  poet  in 
the  monk  of  Eisleben,  who  shall  cut  deep  on  the  memory 
of  mankind  that  brief  creed  of  conscience,  —  "  Here  am 
I ;  God  help  me  :  I  cannot  otherwise."  This,  it  seems  to 
me,  with  dogged  sense  of  justice,  —  both  results  of  that 
11* 


250  CHAUCER. 

equilibrium  of  thought  which  springs  from  clear-sighted 
understanding,  —  makes  the  beauty  of  the  Saxon  nature. 

He  believes  in  another  world,  and  conceives  of  it  with 
out  metaphysical  subtleties  as  something  very  much 
after  the  pattern  of  this,  but  infinitely  more  desirable. 
Witness  the  vision  of  John  Bunyan.  Once  beat  it  into 
him  that  his  eternal  ivell-being,  as  he  calls  it,  depends 
on  certain  conditions,  that  only  so  will  the  balance  in 
the  ledger  of  eternity  be  in  his  favor,  and  the  man  who 
seemed  wholly  of  this  world  will  give  all  that  he  has, 
even  his  life,  with  a  superb  simplicity  and  scorn  of  the 
theatric,  for  a  chance  in  the  next.  Hard  to  move,  his 
very  solidity  of  nature  makes  him  terrible  when  once 
fairly  set  agoing.  He  is  the  man  of  all  others  slow  to 
admit  the  thought  of  revolution ;  but  let  him  once  admit 
it,  he  will  carry  it  through  and  make  it  stick,  —  a  secret 
hitherto  undiscoverable  by  other  races. 

But  poetry  is  not  made  out  of  the  understanding ; 
that  is  not  the  sort  of  block  out  of  which  you  can  carve 
wing-footed  Mercuries.  The  question  of  common-sense 
is  always,  "What  is  it  good  for?" —  a  question  which 
would  abolish  the  rose  and  be  answered  triumphantly 
by  the  cabbage.  The  danger  'of  the  prosaic  type  of 
mind  lies  in  the  stolid  sense  of  superiority  which  blinds 
it  to  everything  ideal,  to  the  use  of  anything  that  does 
not  serve  the  practical  purposes  of  life.  Do  we  not  re 
member  how  the  all-observing  and  Jill-fathoming  Shake 
speare  has  typified  this  in  Bottom  the  weaver  1  Sur 
rounded  by  all  the  faiiy  creations  of  fancy,  he  sends 
one  to  fetch  him  the  bag  of  a  humble-bee,  and  can  find 
no  better  employment  for  Mustard-seed  than  to  help 
Cavalero  Cobweb  scratch  his  ass's  head  between  the  ears. 
When  Titauia,  queen  of  that  fair  ideal  world,  offers  him 
a  feast  of  beauty,  he  says  he  has  a  good  stomach  to  a 
pottle  of  hay ! 


CHAUCER.  251 

The  Anglo-Saxons  never  had  any  real  literature  of 
x  their  own.  They  produced  monkish  chronicles  in  bad 
Latin,  and  legends  of  saints  in  worse  metre.  Their 
earlier  poetry  is  essentially  Scandinavian.  It  was  that 
gens  inclytissima  Northmannorum  that  imported  the 
divine  power  of  imagination,  —  that  power  which,  min 
gled  with  the  solid  Saxon  understanding,  produced  at 
last  the  miracle  of  Stratford.  It  was  to  this  adventur 
ous  race,  which  found  America  before  Columbus,  which, 
for  the  sake  of  freedom  of  thought,  could  colonize  in 
hospitable  Iceland,  which,  as  it  were,  typifying  the  very 
action  of  the  imaginative  faculty  itself,  identified  itself 
always  with  what  it  conquered,  that  we  owe  whatever 
aquiline  features  there  are  in  the  national  physiognomy 
.  of  the  English  race.  It  was  through  the  Normans  that 
the  English  mind  and  fancy,  hitherto  provincial  and 
uncouth,  were  first  infused  with  the  lightness,  grace, 
and  self-confidence  of  Romance  literature.  They  seem 
to  have  opened  a  window  to  the  southward  in  that  solid 
and  somewhat  sombre  insular  character,  and  it  was  a 
painted  window  all  aglow  with  the  figures  of  tradition 
and  poetry.  The  old  Gothic  volume,  grim  with  legends 
of  devilish  temptation  and  satanic  lore,  they  illuminated 
with  the  gay  and  brilliant  inventions  of  a  softer  climate 
and  more  genial  moods.  Even  the  stories  of  Arthur 
and  his  knights,  toward  which  the  stern  Dante  himself 
relented  so  far  as  to  call  them  gratissimas  ambages,  most 
delightful  circumlocutions,  though  of  British  original, 
were  first  set  free  from  the  dungeon  of  a  barbarous 
dialect  by  the  French  poets,  and  so  brought  back  to 
England,  and  made  popular  there  by  the  Normans. 

Chaucer,  to  whom  French  must  have  been  almost  as 
truly  a  mother  tongue  as  English,  was  familiar  with  all 
that  had  been  done  by  Troubadour  or  Trouvere.  In. 
him  we  see  the  first  result  of  the  Norman  yeast  upon 


252  CHAUCER. 

the  home-baked  Saxon  loaf.  The  flour  had  been  honest, 
the  paste  well  kneaded,  but  the  inspiring  leaven  wtis 
wanting  till  the  Norman  brought  it  over.  Chaucer 
works  still  in  the  solid  material  of  his  race,  but  with 
what  airy  lightness  has  he  not  infused  it  1  Without 
ceasing  to  be  English,  he  has  escaped  from  being  insular. 
But  he  was  something  more  than  this  ;  he  was  a  scholar, 
a  thinker,  and  a  critic.  He  had  studied  the  Divina 
Commedia  of  Dante,  he  had  read  Petrarca  and  Boccaccio, 
and  some  of  the  Latin  poets.  He  calls  Dante  the  great 
poet  of  Italy,  and  Petrarch  a  learned  clerk.  It  is  plain 
that  he  knew  very  well  the  truer  purpose  of  poetry,  and 
had  even  arrived  at  the  higher  wisdom  of  comprehend 
ing  the  aptitudes  and  limitations  of  his  own  genius. 
He  saw  clearly  and  felt  keenly  what  were  the  faults 
and  what  the  wants  of  the  prevailing  literature  of  his 
country.  In  the  "  Monk's  Tale  "  he  slyly  satirizes  the 
long-winded  morality  of  Gower,  as  his  prose  antitype, 
Fielding,  was  to  satirize  the  prolix  sentimentality  of 
Richardson.  In  the  rhyme  of  Sir  Thopas  he  gives  the 
coup  de  grace  to  the  romances  of  Chivalry,  and  in  his 
own  choice  of  a  subject  he  heralds  that  new  world  in 
which  the  actual  and  the  popular  were  to  supplant  the 
fantastic  and  the  heroic. 

Before  Chaucer,  modern  Europe  had  given  birth  to  one 
great  poet,  Dante ;  and  contemporary  with  him  was  one 
supremely  elegant  one,  Petrarch.  Dante  died  only 
seven  years  before  Chaucer  was  born,  and,  so  far  as 
culture  is  derived  from  books,  the  moral  and  intellect 
ual  influences  they  had  been  subjected  to,  the  specu 
lative  stimulus  that  may  have  given  an  impulse  to 
their  minds,  —  there  could  have  been  no  essential  differ 
ence  between  them.  Yet  there  are  certain  points  of  resem 
blance  and  of  contrast,  and  those  not  entirely  fanci 
ful,  which  seem  to  me  of  considerable  interest.  Both 


CHAUCER.  253 

were  of  mixed  race,  Dante  certainly,  Chaucer  presum 
ably  so.  Dante  seems  to  have  inherited  on  the  Teutonic 
side  the  strong  moral  sense,  the  almost  nervous  irrita 
bility  of  conscience,  and  the  tendency  to  mysticism  which 
made  him  the  first  of  Christian  poets,  —  first  in  point 
of  time  and  first  in  point  of  greatness.  From  the  other 
side  he  seems  to  have  received  almost  in  overplus  a  feel 
ing  of  order  and  proportion,  sometimes  wellnigh  harden 
ing  into  mathematical  precision  and  formalism,  —  a 
tendency  which  at  last  brought  the  poetry  of  the  Ro 
manic  races  to  a  dead-lock  of  ai'tifice  and  decorum. 
Chaucer,  on  the  other  hand,  drew  from  the  South  a 
certain  airiness  of  sentiment  and  expression,  a  felicity  of 
phrase,  and  an  elegance  of  turn  hitherto  unprecedented 
and  hardly  yet  matched  in  our  literature,  but  all  the 
while  kept  firm  hold  of  his  native  soundness  of  under 
standing,  and  that  genial  humor  which  seems  to  be  the 
proper  element  of  worldly  wisdom.  With  Dante,  life 
represented  the  passage  of  the  soul  from  a  state  of  na 
ture  to  a  state  of  grace  ;  and  there  would  have  been 
almost  an  even  chance  whether  (as  Burns  says)  the 
Divina  Commedia  had  turned  out  a  song  or  a  sermon, 
but  for  the  wondei'ful  genius  of  its  author,  which  has 
compelled  the  sermon  to  sing  and  the  song  to  preach, 
whether  they  would  or  no.  With  Chaucer,  life  is  a  pil 
grimage,  but  only  that  his  eye  may  be  delighted  with 
the  varieties  of  costume  and  character.  There  are  good 
morals  to  be  found  in  Chaucer,  but  they  are  always  inci 
dental.  ..With  Dante  the  main  question  is  the  saving  of 
the  soul,  with  Chaucer  it  is  the  conduct  of  life.  The 
distance  between  them  is  almost  that  between  holiness 
and  prudence.  Dante  applies  himself  to  the  realities 
and  Chaucer  to  the  scenery  of  life,  and  the  former  is 
consequently  the  more  universal  poet,  as  the  latter  is 
the  more  truly  national  one.  Dante  represents  the 


254  CHAUCER. 

justice  of  God,  and  Chaucer  his  loving-kindness.  If 
there  is  anything  that  may  properly  be  called  satire  in 
the  one,  it  is  like  a  blast  of  the  divine  wrath,  before 
which  the  wretches  cower  and  tremble,  which  rends 
away  their  cloaks  of  hypocrisy  and  their  masks  of  worldly 
propriety,  and  leaves  them  shivering  in  the  cruel  naked 
ness  of  their  shame.  The  satire  of  the  other  is  genial 
with  the  broad  sunshine  of  humor,  into  which  the  vic 
tims  walk  forth  with  a  delightful  unconcern,  laying  aside 
of  themselves  the  disguises  that  seem  to  make  them  un 
comfortably  warm,  till  they  have  made  a  thorough  be 
trayal  of  themselves  so  unconsciously  that  we  almost 
pity  while  we  laugh.  Dante  shows  us  the  punishment 
of  sins  against  God  and  one's  neighbor,  in  order  that  we 
may  shun  them,  and  so  escape  the  doom  that  awaits  them 
in  the  other  world.  Chaucer  exposes  the  cheats  of  the 
transmuter  of  metals,  of  the  begging  friars,  and  of  the 
pedlers  of  indulgences,  in  order  that  we  may  be  on  our 
guard  against  them  in  this  world.  If  we  are  to  judge  of 
what  is  national  only  by  the  highest  and  most  charac 
teristic  types,  surely  we  cannot  fail  to  see  in  Chaucer 
the  true  forerunner  and  prototype  of  Shakespeare,  who, 
with  an  imagination  of  far  deeper  grasp,  a  far  wider 
reach  of  thought,  yet  took  the  same  delight  in  the 
pageantry  of  the  actual  world,  and  whose  moral  is  the 
moral  of  worldly  wisdom  only  heightened  to  the  level 
of  his  wide-viewing  mind,  and  made  typical  by  the  dra 
matic  energy  of  his  plastic  nature. 

Yet  if  Chaifcer  had  little  of  that  organic  force  of  life 
which  so  inspires  the  poem  of  Dante  that,  as  he  himself 
says  of  the  heavens,  part  answers  to  part  with  mutual 
interchange  of  light,  he  had  a  structural  faculty  which 
distinguishes  him  from  all  other  English  poets,  his  con 
temporaries,  and  which  indeed  is  the  primary  distinction 
of  poets  properly  so  called.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  only 


CHAUCER.  255 

one  other  English  writer  coeval  with  himself  who  de 
serves*  in  any  way  to  be  compared  with  him,  and  that 
rather  for  contrast  than  for  likeness. 

With  the  single  exception  of  Langland,  the  English 
poets,  his  contemporaries,  were  little  else  than  bad 
versifiers  of  legends  classic  or  mediaeval,  as  happened, 
without  selection  and  without  art.  Chaucer  is  the  first 
who  broke  away  from  the  dreary  traditional  style,  and 
gave  not  merely  stories,  but  lively  pictures  of  real  life  as 
the  ever-renewed  substance  of  poetry.  He  was  a  re 
former,  too,  not  only  in  literature,  but  in  morals.  But 
as  in  the  former  his  exquisite  tact  saved  him  from  all 
eccentricity,  so  in  the  latter  the  pervading  sweetness  of 
his  nature  could  never  be  betrayed  into  harshness  and 
invective.  He  seems  incapable  of  indignation.  He 
mused  good-naturedly  over  the  vices  and  follies  of  men, 
and,  never  forgetting  that  he  was  fashioned  of  the  same 
clay,  is  rather  apt  to  pity  than  condemn.  There  is  no 
touch  of  cynicism  in  all  he  wrote.  Dante's  brush  seems 
sometimes  to  have  been  smeared  with  the  burning  pitch 
of  his  own  fiery  lake.  Chaucer's  pencil  is  dipped  in  the 
cheerful  color-box  of  the  old  illuminators,  and  he  has 
their  patient  delicacy  of  touch,  with  a  freedom  far  be 
yond  their  somewhat  mechanic  brilliancy. 

English  narrative  poetry,  as  Chaucer  found  it,  though 
it  had  not  altogether  escaped  from  the  primal  curse  of 
long-windedness  so  painfully  characteristic  of  its  pro 
totype,  the  French  Romance  of  Chivalry,  had  certainly 
shown  a  feeling  for  the  picturesque,  a  sense  of  color,  a 
directness  of  phrase,  and  a  simplicity  of  treatment  which 
give  it  graces  of  its  own  and  a  turn  peculiar  to  itself. 
In  the  easy  knack  of  story-telling,  the  popular  minstrels 
cannot  compare  with  Marie  de  France.  The  lightsome- 
ness  of  fancy,  that  leaves  a  touch  of  sunshine  and  is 
gone,  is  painfully  missed  in  them  all.  Their  incidents 


256  CHAUCER. 

enter  dispersedly,  as  the  old  stage  directions  used  to 
say,  and  they  have  not  learned  the  art  of  concentrating 
their  force  on  the  key-point  of  their  hearers'  interest. 
They  neither  get  fairly  hold  of  their  subject,  nor,  what  is 
more  important,  does  it  get  hold  of  them.  But  they 
sometimes  yield  to  an  instinctive  hint  of  leaving-off  at 
the  right  moment,  and  in  their  happy  negligence  achieve 
an  effect  only  to  be  matched  by  the  highest  successes  of 

art. 

"  That  lady  heard  his  mourning  all 
Right  under  her  chamber  wall, 
In  her  oriel  where  she  was, 
Closed  well  with  royal  glass; 
Fulfilled  it  was  with  imagery 
Every  window,  by  and  by; 
On  each  side  had  there  a  gin 
Sperred  with  many  a  divers  pin; 
Anon  that  lady  fair  and  free 
Undid  a  pin  of  ivory 
And  wide  the  window  she  open  set, 
The  sun  shone  in  at  her  closet." 

It  is  true  the  old  rhymer  relapses  a  little  into  the  habit 
ual  drone  of  his  class,  and  shows  half  a  mind  to  bolt 
into  their  common  inventory  style  when  he  comes  to  his 
gins  and  pins,  but  he  withstands  the  temptation  man 
fully,  and  his  sunshine  fills  our  hearts  with  a  gush  as 
sudden  as  that  which  illumines  the  lady's  oriel.  Cole 
ridge  and  Keats  have  each  in  his  way  felt  the  charm  of 
this  winsome  picture,  but  have  hardly  equalled  its  hearty 
honesty,  its  economy  of  material,  the  supreme  test  of 
artistic  skill.  I  admit  that  the  phrase  "had  there  a 
gin  "  is  suspicious,  and  suggests  a  French  original,  but  I 
remember  nothing  altogether  so  good  in  the  romances 
from  the  other  side  of  the  Channel.  One  more  passage 
occurs  to  me,  almost  incomparable  in  its  simple  straight 
forward  force  and  choice  of  the  right  word. 

"  Sir  Graysteel  to  his  death  thus  thraws, 
He  welters  [wallows]  and  the  grass  updraws; 


CHAUCER.  257 

A  little  while  then  lay  he  still, 
(Friends  that  saw  him  liked  full  ill,) 
And  bled  into  his  armor  bright." 

The  last  line,  for  suggestive  reticence,  almost  deserves 
to  be  put  beside  the  famous 

"  Quel  giorno  piii  non  vi  leggemmo  avante  " 

of  the  great  master  of  laconic  narration.  In  the  same 
poem  *  the  growing  love  of  the  lady,  in  its  maidenliness 
of  unconscious  betrayal,  is  touched  with  a  delicacy  and 
tact  as  surprising  as  they  are  delightful.  But  such  pas 
sages,  which  are  the  despair  of  poets  who  have  to  work 
in  a  language  that  has  faded  into  diction,  are  exceptional. 
They  are  to  be  set  down  rather  to  good  luck  than  to  art. 
Even  the  stereotyped  similes  of  these  fortunate  illiterates, 
like  "  weary  as  water  in  a  weir,"  or  "  glad  as  grass  is  of 
the  rain,"  are  new,  like  nature,  at  the  thousandth  repe 
tition.  Perhaps  our  palled  taste  overvalues  the  wild 
flavor  of  these  wayside  treasure-troves.  They  are  wood- 
strawberries,  prized  in  proportion  as  we  must  turn  over 
more  leaves  ere  we  find  one.  This  popular  literature  is 
of  value  in  helping  us  toward  a  juster  estimate  of  Chaucer 
by  showing  what  the  mere  language  was  capable  of,  and 
that  all  it  wanted  was  a  poet  to  put  it  through  its  paces. 
For  though  the  poems  I  have  quoted  be,  in  their  present 
form,  later  than  he,  they  are,  after  all,  but  modernized 
versions  of  older  copies,  which  they  doubtless  reproduce 
with  substantial  fidelity. 

It  is  commonly  assumed  that  Chaucer  did  for  English 
what  Dante  is  supposed  to  have  done  for  Italian  and 
Luther  for  German,  that  he,  in  short,  in  some  hitherto 
inexplicable  way,  created  it.  But  this  is  to  speak  loosely 
and  without  book.  Languages  are  never  made  in  any 

*  Sir  Eger  and  Sir  Grine  in  the  Percy  Folio.    The  passage  quoted 
is  from  Ellis. 


258  CHAUCER. 

such  fashion,  still  less  are  they  the  achievement  of  any 
single  man,  however  great  his  genius,  however  powerful 
his  individuality.  They  shape  themselves  by  laws  as 
definite  as  those  which  guide  and  limit  the  growth  of 
other  living  organisms.  Dante,  indeed,  has  told  us  that 
he  chose  to  write  in  the  tongue  that  might  be  learned  of 
nurses  and  chafferers  in  the  market.  His  practice  shows 
that  he  knew  perfectly  well  that  poetry  has  needs  which 
cannot  be  answered  by  the  vehicle  of  vulgar  commerce 
between  man  and  man.  What  he  instinctively  felt  was, 
that  there  was  the  living  heart  of  all  speech,  without 
whose  help  the  brain  were  powerless  to  send  will,  motion, 
meaning,  to  the  limbs  and  extremities.  But  it  is  true 
that  a  language,  as  respects  the  uses  of  literature,  is  lia 
ble  to  a  kind  of  syncope.  No  matter  how  complete  its 
vocabulary  may  be,  how  thorough  an  outfit  of  inflections 
and  case-endings  it  may  have,  it  is  a  mere  dead  body 
without  a  soul  till  some  man  of  genius  set  its  arrested 
pulses  once  more  athrob,  and  show  what  wealth  of  sweet 
ness,  scorn,  persuasion,  and  passion  lay  there  awaiting  its 
liberate:*.  In  this  sense  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
that  Chaucer,  like  Dante,  found  his  native  tongue  a  dia 
lect  and  left  it  a  language.  But  it  was  not  what  he  did 
with  deliberate  purpose  of  reform,  it  was  his  kindly  and 
plastic  genius  that  wrought  this  magic  of  renewal  and 
inspiration.  It  was  not  the  new  words  he  introduced,* 
but  his  way  of  using  the  old  ones,  that  surprised  them 
into  grace,  ease,  and  dignity  in  their  own  despite.  In 
order  to  feel  fully  how  much  he  achieved,  let  any  one 
subject  himself  to  a  penitential  course  of  reading  in  his 
contemporary,  Gower,  who  worked  in  a  material  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  the  same,  or  listen  for  a  moment 
to  the  barbarous  jangle  which  Lydgate  and  Occleve  con 
trive  to  draw  from  the  instrument  their  master  had  tuned 

*  I  think  he  tried  one  now  and  then,  like  "  eyen  columbine." 


CHAUCER.  259 

so  deftly.  Gower  has  positively  raised  tediousness  to  the 
precision  of  science,  he  has  made  dulness  an  heirloom  for 
the  students  of  oxir  literary  history.  As  you  slip  to  and 
fro  on  the  frozen  levels  of  his  verse,  which  give  no  foot 
hold  to  the  mind,  as  your  nervous  ear  awaits  the  inevita 
ble  recurrence  of  his  rhyme,  regularly  pertinacious  as 
the  tick  of  an  eight-day  clock  and  reminding  you  of 
Wordsworth's 

"  Once  more  the  ass  did  lengthen  out 
The  hard,  dry,  seesaw  of  his  horrible  bray," 

you  learn  to  dread,  almost  to  respect,  the  powers  of  this 
indefatigable  man.  He  is  the  undertaker  of  the  fair 
mediaeval  legend,  and  his  style  has  the  hateful  gloss,  the 
seemingly  unnatural  length,  of  a  coffin.  Love,  beauty, 
passion,  nature,  art,  life,  the  natural  and  theological  vir 
tues,  —  there  is  nothing  beyond  his  power  to  disenchant, 
nothing  out  of  which  the  tremendous  hydraulic  press  of 
his  allegory  (or  whatever  it  is,  for  I  am  not  sure  if  it  be 
not  something  even  worse)  will  not  squeeze  all  feeling 
and  freshness  and  leave  it  a  juiceless  pulp.  It  matters 
not  where  you  try  him,  whether  his  story  be  Christian 
or  pagan,  borrowed  from  history  or  fable,  you  cannot 
escape  him.  Dip  in  at  the  middle  or  the  end,  dodge 
back  to  the  beginning,  the  patient  old  man  is  there  to 
take  you  by  the  button  and  go  on  with  his  imperturba 
ble  narrative.  You  may  have  left  off  with  Clytemnes- 
tra,  and  you  begin  again  with  Samson ;  it  makes  no 
odds,  for  you  cannot  tell  one  from  tother.  His  tedious- 
ness  is  omnipresent,  and  like  Dogberry  he  could  find  in 
his  heart  to  bestow  it  all  (and  more  if  he  had  it)  on  your 
worship.  The  word  lengthy  has  been  charged  to  our 
American  account,  but  it  must  have  been  invented  by 
the  first  reader  of  Gower's  works,  the  only  inspiration  of 
which  they  were  ever  capable.  Our  literature  had  to  lie 
by  and  recruit  for  more  than  four  centuries  ere  it  could 


260  CHAUCER. 

give  us  an  equal  vacuity  in  Tupper,  so  persistent  a  uni 
formity  of  commonplace  in  the  "  Recreations  of  a  Coun 
try  Parson."  Let  us  be  thankful  that  the  industrious 
Gower  never  found  time  for  recreation  ! 

But  a  fairer  as  well  as  more  instructive  comparison  lies 
between  Chaucer  and  the  author  of  "  Piers  Ploughman." 
Langland  has  as  much  tenderness,  as  much  interest  in 
the  varied  picture  of  life,  as  hearty  a  contempt  for  hy 
pocrisy,  and  almost  an  equal  sense  of  fun.  He  has  the 
same  easy  abundance  of  matter.  But  what  a  difference ! 
It  is  the  difference  between  the  poet  and  the  man  of 
poetic  temperament.  The  abundance  of  the  one  is  a  con 
tinual  fulness  within  the  fixed  limits  of  good  taste ;  that 
of  the  other  is  sqxiandered  in  overflow.  The  one  can  be 
profuse  on  occasion ;  the  other  is  diffuse  whether  he  will 
or  no.  The  one  is  full  of  talk  ;  the  other  is  garrulous. 
What  in  one  is  the  refined  bonhomie  of  a  man  of  the  world, 
is  a  rustic  shrewdness  in  the  other.  Both  are  kindly  in 
their  satire,  and  have  not  (like  too  many  reformers)  that 
vindictive  love  of  virtue  which  spreads  the  stool  of  re 
pentance  with  thistle-burrs  before  they  invite  the  erring 
to  seat  themselves  therein.  But  what  in  "  Piers  Plough 
man  "  is  sly  fun,  has  the  breadth  and  depth  of  humor  in 
Chaucer ;  and  it  is  plain  that  while  the  former  was  taken 
up  by  his  moral  purpose,  the  main  interest  of  the  latter 
turned  to  perfecting  the  form  of  his  work.  In  short, 
Chaucer  had  that  fine  literary  sense  which  is  as  rare  as 
genius,  and,  united  with  it,  as  it  was  in  him,  assures  an 
immortality  of  fame.  It  is  not  merely  what  he  has  to 
say,  but  even  more  the  agreeable  way  he  has  of  saying  it, 
that  captivates  our  attention  and  gives  him  an  assured 
place  in  literature.  Above  all,  it  is  not  in  detached  pas 
sages  that  his  charm  lies,  but  in  the  entirety  of  expression 
and  the  cumulative  effect  of  many  particulars  working 
toward  a  common  end.  Now  though  ex  ungue  leonem  be 


CHAUCER.  261 

a  good  rule  in  comparative  anatomy,  its  application,  ex 
cept  in  a  very  limited  way,  in  criticism  is  sure  to  mislead ; 
for  we  should  always  bear  in  mind  that  the  really  great 
writer  is  great  in  the  mass,  and  is  to  be  tested  less  by  his 
cleverness  in  the  elaboration  of  parts  than  by  that  reach 
of  mind  which  is  incapable  of  random  effort,  which  selects, 
arranges,  combines,  rejects,  denies  itself  the  cheap  tri 
umph  of  immediate  effects,  because  it  is  absorbed  by  the 
controlling  charm  of  proportion  and  unity.  A  careless 
good-luck  of  phrase  is  delightful ;  but  criticism  cleaves  to 
the  teleological  argument,  and  distinguishes  the  creative 
intellect,  not  so  much  by  any  happiness  of  natural  endow 
ment  as  by  the  marks  of  design.  It  is  true  that  one  may 
sometimes  discover  by  a  single  verse  whether  an  author 
have  imagination,  or  may  make  a  shrewd  guess  whether 
he  have  style  or  no,  just  as  by  a  few  spoken  words  you 
may  judge  of  a  man's  accent;  but  the  true  artist  in 
language  is  never  spotty,  and  needs  no  guide-boards  of 
admiring  italics,  a  critical  method  introduced  by  Leigh 
Hunt,  whose  feminine  temperament  gave  him  acute  per 
ceptions  at  the  expense  of  judgment.  This  is  the  Boeotian 
method,  which  offers  us  a  brick  as  a  sample  of  the  house, 
forgetting  that  it  is  not  the  goodness  of  the  separate 
bricks,  but  the  way  in  which  they  are  put  together,  that 
brings  them  within  the  province  of  art,  and  makes  the 
difference  between  a  heap  and  a  house.  A  great  writer 
does  not  reveal  himself  here  and  there,  but  everywhere. 
Langland's  verse  runs  mostly  like  a  brook,  with  a  beguil 
ing  and  welluigh  slumberous  prattle,  but  he,  more  often 
than  any  writer  of  his  class,  flashes  into  salient  lines,  gets 
inside  our  guard  with  the  home-thrust  of  a  forthright 
word,  and  he  gains  if  taken  piecemeal.  His  i.-.agery  is 
naturally  and  vividly  picturesque,  as  where  he  says  of 
Old  Age,  — 


262  CHAUCER. 

"  Eld  the  hoar 

That  was  in  the  vauntwtrd, 
And  bare  the  banner  before  death,"  — 

and  he  softens  to  a  sweetness  of  sympathy  beyond  Chau 
cer  when  he  speaks  of  the  poor  or  tells  us  that  Mercy  is 
"  sib  of  all  sinful  "  ;  but  to  compare  "  Piers  Ploughman" 
with  the  "  Canterbury  Tales  "  is  to  compare  sermon  with 
song. 

Let  us  put  a  bit  of  Langland's  satire  beside  one  of 
Chaucer's.  Some  people  in  search  of  Truth  meet  a  pil 
grim  and  ask  him  whence  he  comes.  He  gives  a  long 
list  of  holy  places,  appealing  for  proof  to  the  relics  on  his 
hat:  — 

" '  I  have  walked  full  wide  in  wet  and  in  dry 
And  sought  saints  for  my  soul's  health.' 
*  Know'st  thou  ever  a  relic  that  is  called  Truth? 
Couldst  thou  show  us  the  way  where  that  wight  dwelleth  ?  ' 
'  Nay,  so  God  help  me,'  said  the  man  then, 
'  I  saw  never  palmer  with  staff  nor  with  scrip 
Ask  after  him  ever  till  now  in  this  place.'  " 

This  is  a  good  hit,  and  the  poet  is  satisfied ;  but,  in  what 
I  am  going  to  quote  from  Chaucer,  everything  becomes 
picture,  over  which  lies  broad  and  warm  the  sunshine  of 
humorous  fancy. 

"  In  olde  dayes  of  the  King  Artonr 
Of  which  that  Britouns  speken  gret  honour, 
All  was  this  lond  fulfilled  of  fayerie : 
The  elf-queen  with  her  joly  compaignie 
Danced  ful  oft  in  many  a  grene  mede: 
Ttiis  was  the  old  opinion  as  I  rede; 
I  speke  of  many  hundrid  yer  ago : 
But  now  can  no  man  see  none  elves  mo, 
For  now  the  grete  charite  and  prayeres 
Of  lymytours  and  other  holy  freres 
That  sechen  every  lond  and  every  streem, 
As  thick  as  motis  in  the  sonnebeam, 
Blessyng  halles,  chambres,  kichenes,  and  boures, 
Citees  and  burghes,  castels  hihe  and  toures, 
Thorpes  and  bernes,  shepnes  and  dayeries, 
This  makith  that  ther  ben  no  fayeries. 
For  ther  as  wont  to  walken  was  an  elf 


CHAUCER.  263 

There  walkith  none  but  the  Jymytour  himself, 

In  undermeles  and  in  morwenynges, 

And  sayth  his  matyns  and  his  holy  thinges, 

As  he  goth  in  his  lymytatioun. 

Wommen  may  now  go  saufly  up  and  doun; 

In  every  bush  or  under  every  tre 

There  is  none  other  incubus  but  he, 

And  lie  ne  wol  doon  hem  no  dishonour." 

How  cunningly  the  contrast  is  suggested  here  between 
the  Elf-queen's  jolly  company  and  the  unsocial  limiters, 
thick  as  motes  in  the  sunbeam,  yet  each  walking  by  him 
self  !  And  with  what  an  air  of  innocent  unconsciousness 
is  the  deadly  thrust  of  the  last  verse  given,  with  its  con 
temptuous  emphasis  on  the  he  that  seems  so  well-mean 
ing  !  Even  Shakespeare,  who  seems  to  come  in  after 
everybody  has  done  his  best  with  a  "  Let  me  take  hold 
a  minute  and  show  you  how  to  do  it,"  could  not  have 
bettered  this. 

"Piers  Ploughman"  is  the  best  example  I  know  of  what 
is  called  popular  poetry,  —  of  compositions,  that  is,  which 
contain  all  the  simpler  elements  of  poetry,  but  still  in 
solution,  not  crystallized  around  any  thread  of  artistic 
purpose.  In  it  appears  at  her  best  the  Anglo-Saxon  Muse, 
a  first  cousin  of  Poor  Richard,  full  of  proverbial  wisdom, 
who  always  brings  her  knitting  in  her  pocket,  and  seems 
most  at  home  in  the  chimney-corner.  It  is  genial ;  it 
plants  itself  firmly  on  human  nature  with  its  rights  and 
wrongs ;  it  has  a  surly  honesty,  prefers  the  downright  to 
the  gracious,  and  conceives  of  speech  as  a  tool  rather 
than  a  musical  instrument.  If  we  should  seek  for  a 
single  word  that  would  define  it  most  precisely,  we  should 
not  choose  simplicity,  but  homeliness.  There  is  more 
or  less  of  this  in  all  early  poetry,  to  be  sure ;  but  I  think 
it  especially  proper  to  English  poets,  and  to  the  most 
English  among  them,  like  Cowper,  Crabbe,  and  one  is 
tempted  to  add  Wordsworth,  —  where  he  forgets  Cole 
ridge's  private  lectures.  In  reading  such  poets  as  Lang- 


264  CHAUCER. 

land,  also,  we  are  not  to  forget  a  certain  charm  of  dis 
tance  in  the  very  language  they  use,  making  it  unhack 
neyed  without  being  alien.  As  it  is  the  chief  function 
of  the  poet  to  make  the  familiar  novel,  these  fortunate 
early  risers  of  literature,  who  gather  phrases  with  the 
dew  still  on  them,  have  their  poetry  done  for  them,  as 
it  were,  by  their  vocabulary.  But  in  Chaucer,  as  in  all 
great  poets,  the  language  gets  its  charm  from  him.  The 
force  and  sweetness  of  his  genius  kneaded  more  kindly 
together  the  Latin  and  Teutonic  elements  of  our  mother 
tongue,  and  made  something  better  than  either.  The 
necessity  of  writing  poetry,  and  not  mere  verse,  made 
him  a  reformer  whether  he  would  or  no  ;  and  the  instinct 
of  his  finer  ear  was  a  guide  such  as  none  before  him  or 
contemporary  with  him,  nor  indeed  any  that  came  after 
him,  till  Spenser,  could  command.  Gower  had  no  notion 
of  the  uses  of  rhyme  except  as  a  kind  of  crease  at  the 
end  of  every  eighth  syllable,  where  the  verse  was  to  be 
folded  over  again  into  another  layer.  He  says,  for  ex 
ample, 

"  This  maiden  Canacee  \vas  hight, 
Both  in  the  day  and  eke  by  night," 

as  if  people  commonly  changed  their  names  at  dark. 
And  he  could  not  even  contrive  to  say  this  without  the 
clumsy  pleonasm  of  both  and  eke.  Chaucer  was  put  to 
no  such  shifts  of  piecing  out  his  metre  with  loose-woven 
bits  of  baser  stuff.  He  himself  says,  in  the  "Man  of 
Law's  Tale,"  - 

"  Me  lists  not  of  the  chaff  nor  of  the  straw 
To  make  so  long  a  tale  as  of  the  corn." 

One  of  the  world's  three  or  four  great  story-tellers,  he 
was  also  one  of  the  best  versifiers  that  ever  made  Eng 
lish  trip  and  sing  with  a  gayety  that  seems  careless,  but 
where  every  foot  beats  time  to  the  tune  of  the  thought. 
By  the  skilful  arrangement  of  his  pauses  he  evaded  the 


CHAUCER.  265 

monotony  of  the  couplet,  and  gave  to  the  rhymed  pen 
tameter,  which  he  made  our  heroic  measure,  something 
of  the  architectural  repose  of  blank  verse.  He  found 
our  language  lumpish,  stiff,  unwilling,  too  apt  to  speak 
Saxonly  in  grouty  monosyllables ;  he  left  it  enriched 
with  the  longer  measure  of  the  Italian  and  Provencal 
poets.  He  reconciled,  in  the  harmony  of  his  verse,  the 
English  bluntness  with  the  dignity  and  elegance  of  the 
less  homely  Southern  speech.  Though  he  did  not  and 
could  not  create  our  language  (for  he  who  writes  to  be 
read  does  not  write  for  linguisters),  yet  it  is  true  that  he 
first  made  it  easy,  and  to  that  extent  modern,  so  that 
Spenser,  two  hundred  years  later,  studied  his  method 
and  called  him  master.  He  first  wrote  English  ;  and  it 
was  a  feeling  of  this,  I  suspect,  that  made  it  fashionable 
in  Elizabeth's  day  to  "  talk  pure  Chaucer."  Already  we 
find  in  his  works  verses  that  might  pass  without  question 
in  Milton  or  even  Wordsworth,  so  mainly  unchanged 
have  the  language  of  poetry  and  the  movement  of  verse 
remained  from  his  day  to  our  own. 

"  Thou  Polymnia 

On  Pe"rnaso,  that,  with*  thy  sisters  glade, 
By  Helicon,  not  far  from  Cirrea, 
Singest  with  voice  memorial  in  the  shade, 
Under  the  laurel  which  that  may  not  fade." 
"  And  downward  from  a  hill  under  a  bent 
There  stood  the  temple  of  Mars  omnipotent 
Wrought  all  of  burned  steel,  of  which  th'  entre'e 
Was  long  and  strait  and  ghastly  for  to  see : 
The  northern  light  in  at  the  doores  shone 
For  window  in  the  wall  ne  was  there  none 
Through  which  men  mighten  any  light  discerne; 
The  dore  was  all  of  adamant  eterne." 

And  here  are  some  lines  that  would  not  seem  out  of 
place  in  the  "Paradise  of  Dainty  Devises  "  :- — 

"  Hide,  Absolom,  thy  gilte  [gilded]  tresses  clear, 
Esther  lay  thou  thy  meekness  all  adown. 

*  Commonly  printed  hath. 
12 


266  CHAUCER. 


Make  of  your  wifehood  no  comparison  ; 
Hide  ye  your  beauties  Ysoude  and  Elaine, 
My  lady  cometh,  that  all  this  may  distain." 

When  I  remember  Chaucer's  malediction  upon  his  scriv 
ener,  and  consider  that  by  far  the  larger  proportion  of 
his  verses  (allowing  always  for  change  of  pronunciation) 
are  perfectly  accordant  with  our  present  accentual  sys 
tem,  I  cannot  believe  that  he  ever  wrote  an  imperfect 
line.  His  ear  would  never  have  tolerated  the  verses  of 
nine  syllables,  with  a  strong  accent  on  the  first,  at 
tributed  to  him  by  Mr.  Skeate  and  Mr.  Morris.  Such 
verses  seem  to  me  simply  impossible  in  the  pentameter 
iambic  as  Chaucer  wrote  it.  A  great  deal  of  misappre 
hension  would  be  avoided  in  discussing  English  metres, 
if  it  were  only  understood  that  quantity  in  Latin  and 
quantity  in  English  mean  very  different  things.  Perhaps 
the  best  quantitative  verses  in  our  language  (better  even 
than  Coleridge's)  are  to  be  found  in  Mother  Goose,  com 
posed  by  nurses  wholly  by  ear  and  beating  time  as  they 
danced  the  baby  on  their  knee.  I  suspect  Chaucer  and 
Shakespeare  would  be  surprised  into  a  smile  by  the 
learned  arguments  which  supply  their  halting  verses 
with  every  kind  of  excuse  except  that  of  being  readable. 
"When  verses  were  written  to  be  chanted,  more  license 
could  be  allowed,  for  the  ear  tolerates  the  widest  devia 
tions  from  habitual  accent  in  words  that  are  sung. 
Segnius  irritant  demissa  per  aurem.  To  some  extent  the 
same  thing  is  true  of  anapaestic  and  other  tripping 
measures,  but  we  cannot  admit  it  in  marching  tunes  like 
those  of  Chaucer.  He  wrote  for  the  eye  more  than  for 
the  voice,  as  poets  had  begun  to  do  long  before.*  Some 

*  Froissart's  description  of  the  book  of  traite's  amouretix  et  de 
moralite",  which  he  had  had  engrossed  for  presentation  to  Richard  II. 
in  1394,  is  enough  to  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  a  modern  author.  "  Et 
lui  plut  tres  grandement;  et  plaire  bien  lui  devoit  car  il  <-tait  enlumine', 


CHAUCER.  267 

loose  talk  of  Coleridge,  loose  in  spite  of  its  affectation 
of  scientific  precision,  about  "retardations"  and  the 
like,  has  misled  many  honest  persons  into  believing  that 
they  can  make  good  verse  out  of  bad  prose.  Coleridge 
himself,  from  natural  fineness  of  ear,  was  the  best 
metrist  among  modern  English  poets,  and,  read  with 
proper  allowances,  his  remarks  upon  versification  are 
always  instructive  to  whoever  is  not  rhythm-deaf.  But 
one  has  no  patience  with  the  dyspondaeuses,  the  pseon 
primuses,  and  what  not,  with  which  he  darkens  verses  that 
are  to  be  explained  only  by  the  contemporary  habits  of 
pronunciation.  Till  after  the  time  of  Shakespeare  we 
must  always  bear  in  mind  that  it  is  not  a  language  of 
books  but  of  living  speech  that  we  have  to  deal  with. 
Of  this  language  Coleridge  had  little  knowledge,  except 
what  could  be  acquired  through  the  ends  of  his  fingers 
as  they  lazily  turned  the  leaves  of  his  haphazard  read 
ing.  If  his  eye  was  caught  by  a  single  passage  that 
gave  him  a  chance  to  theorize  he  did  not  look  farther. 
Speaking  of  Massinger,  for  example,  he  says,  "  When  a 
speech  is  interrupted,  or  one  of  the  characters  speaks 
aside,  the  last  syllable  of  the  former  speech  and  first  of 
the  succeeding  Massinger  coxmts  for  one,  because  both 
are  supposed  to  be  spoken  at  the  same  moment. 

'  And  felt  the  sweetness  o/"'< 

'  How  her  mouth  runs  over.' " 

Now  fifty  instances  may  be  cited  from  Massinger  which 

e'crit  et  historic1  et  convert  de  vermeil  velours  a  dis  cloux  d'argent 
dor^s  d'or,  et  roses  d'or  au  milieu,  et  a  deux  grands  fremaulx  dor^s  et 
richement  ouvre's  au  milieu  de  rosiers  d'or."     How  lovingly  he  lingers 
over  it,  hooking  it  together  with  et  after  et  I    But  two  centuries  earlier, 
while  the  jongleurs  were  still  in  full  song,  poems  were  also  read  aloud. 
"  Pur  remembrer  des  ancessours 
Les  faits  et  les  dits  et  les  mours, 
Deit  1'en  les  livres  et  les  gestes 
Et  les  estoires  lire  a  festes."  —  Roman  du  Ron. 
But  Chaucer  wrote  for  the  private  reading  of  the  closet 


268  CHAUCER. 

tell  against  this  fanciful  notion,  for  one  that  seems,  and 
only  seems,  in  its  favor.  Any  one  tolerably  familiar  with 
the  dramatists  knows  that  in  the  passage  quoted  by 
Coleridge,  the  how  being  emphatic,  "how  her"  was  pro 
nounced  how  'r.  He  tells  us  that  "  Massinger  is  fond  of 
the  anapaest  in  the  first  and  third  foot,  as  :  — 
'  To  your  more  |  than  mas|culine  reajson  that  |  commands  '5m  ||.' 

Likewise  of  the  second  pseon  (_  _  ^  ^)  in  the  first  foot, 
followed  by  four  trochees  (_  _),  as  :  — 

'  So  greedily  |  long  for,  |  know  their  |  tltlll|ati6ns.'  " 

In  truth,  he  was  no  fonder  of  them  than  his  brother 
dramatists  who,  like  him,  wrote  for  the  voice  by  the  ear. 
"  To  your  "  is  still  one  syllable  in  ordinary  speech,  and 
"  masculine  "  and  "  greedily  "  were  and  are  dissyllables 
or  trisyllables  according  to  their  place  in  the  verse. 
Coleridge  was  making  pedantry  of  a  very  simple  matter. 
Yet  he  has  said  with  perfect  truth  of  Chaucer's  verse, 
"  Let  a  few  plain  rules  be  given  for  sounding  the  final  « 
of  syllables,  and  for  expressing  the  terminations  of  such 
words  as  ocean  and  nation,  &c.,  as  dissyllables,  —  or  let 
the  syllables  to  be  sounded  in  such  cases  be  marked  by 
a  competent  metrist.  This  simple  expedient  would,  with 
a  very  few  trifling  exceptions,  where  the  errors  are  in 
veterate,  enable  any  one  to  feel  the  perfect  smoothness 
and  harmony  of  Chaucer's  verse."  But  let  us  keep  wide 
ly  clear  of  Latin  and  Greek  terms  of  prosody  !  It  is  also 
more  important  here  than  even  with  the  dramatists  of 
Shakespeare's  time  to  remember  that  we  have  to  do  with 
a  language  caught  more  from  the  ear  than  from  books. 
The  best  school  for  learning  to  understand  Chaucer's 
elisions,  compressions,  slurrings-over  and  runnings-to 
gether  of  syllables  is  to  listen  to  the  habitual  speech  of 
rustics  with  whom  language  is  still  plastic  to  meaning,  and 
hurries  or  prolongs  itself  accordingly.  Here  is  a  contrac- 


CHAUCER.  269 

tion  frequent  in  Chaucer,  and  still  common  in  New  Eng 
land  :  — 

"  But  me  were  lever  than  [lever  'n]  all  this  town,  quod  he." 

Let  one  example  suffice  for  many.  To  Coleridge's  rules 
another  should  be  added  by  a  wise  editor ;  and  that  is  to 
restore  the  final  n  in  the  infinitive  and  third  person  plural 
of  verbs,  and  in  such  other  cases  as  can  be  justified  by 
the  authority  of  Chaucer  himself.  Surely  his  ear  could 
never  have  endured  the  sing-song  of  such  verses  as 

"  I  couthe  telle  for  a  gowne-cloth," 
or 

"  Than  ye  to  me  schuld  breke  youre  trouthe." 

Chaucei^s  measure  is  so  uniform  (making  due  allowances) 
that  words  should  be  transposed  or  even  omitted  where 
the  verse  manifestly  demands  it,  —  and  with  copyists  so 
long  and  dull  of  ear  this  is  often  the  case.  Sometimes 
they  leave  out  a  needful  word  :  — 

"  But  er  [the]  thunder  stynte,  there  cometh  rain," 
"  When  [that]  we  ben  yflattered  and  ypraised," 
fi  Tak  [ye]  him  for  the  greatest  gentleman." 

Sometimes  they  thrust  in  a  word  or  words  that  hobble 
the  verse  :  — 

"  She  trowed  he  were  yfel  in  [some]  maladie," 
"  Ye  faren  like  a  man  [that]  had  lost  his  wit," 
"  Then  have  I  got  of  you  the  maystrie,  quod  she," 
'.  (Then  have  I  got  the  maystery,  quod  she,) 
"  And  quod  the juge  [also]  thou  must  lose  thy  head." 

Sometimes  they  give  a  wrong  word  identical  in  mean 
ing  :  — 

"And  therwithal  he  knew  [couthe]  mo  proverbes." 

Sometimes  they  change  the  true  order  of  the  words  :  — 

"  Therefore  no  woman  of  clerkes  is  [is  of  clerkes]  praised  " 
"  His  felaw  lo,  here  he  stout  [stont  he]  hool  on  live." 

"  He  that  coveteth  is  a  pore'  wight 
For  he  wold  have  that  is  not  in  his  might; 
But  he  that  nought  hath  ne  coveteth  nought  to  have." 


270  CHAUCER. 

Here  the  "  but  "  of  the  third  verse  belongs  at  the  head 
of  the  first,  and  we  get  rid  of  the  anomaly  of  "  coveteth" 
differently  accented  within  two  lines.  Nearly  all  the 
seemingly  unmetrical  verses  may  be  righted  in  this  way. 
I  find  a  good  example  of  this  in  the  last  stanza  of  "  Troi- 
lus  and  Creseide."  As  it  stands,  we  read,  — 

"  Thou  one,  two,  and  three,  eterne  on  live 
That  raignast  aie  in  three,  two  and  one." 

It  is  plain  that  we  should  read  "  one  and  two "  in  the 
first  verse,  and  "three  and  two"  in  the  second.  Re 
membering,  then,  that  Chaucer  was  here  translating 
Dante,  I  turned  (after  making  the  correction)  to  the 
original,  and  found  as  I  expected 

"  Quell'  uno  e  due  e  tre  che  sempre  vive 
E  regna  sempre  in  tre  e  due  ed  uno."    (Par.  xiv.  28,  29.) 

Iri  the  stanza  before  this  we  have,  — 

"  To  thee  and  to  the  philosophical  strode, 
To  vouchsafe  [vouchesafe]  there  need  is,  to  correct "  ; 

and  further  on,  — 

"  With  all  mine  herte'  of  mercy  ever  I  pray 
And  to  the  Lord  aright  thus  I  speake  and  say," 

where  we  must  either  strike  out  the  second  "  I "  or  put 
it  after  "  speake." 

One  often  finds  such  changes  made  by  ear  justified  by 
the  readings  in  other  texts,  and  we  cannot  but  hope  that 
the  Chaucer  Society  will  give  us  the  means  of  at  last 
settling  upon  a  version  which  shall  make  the  poems  of 
one  of  the  most  fluent  of  metrists  at  least  readable.  Let 
anyone  compare  the  "  Franklin's  Talc "  in  the  Aldine 
edition*  with  the  text  given  by  Wright,  and  he  will  find 
both  sense  and  metre  clear  themselves  up  in  a  surpris 
ing  way.  A  careful  collation  of  texts,  by  the  way,  con- 

*  One  of  the  very  worst,  be  it  said  in  passing. 


CHAUCER.  271 

firms   one's   confidence   in   Tyrwhitt's   good   taste   and 
thoroughness. 

A  writer  in  the  "Proceedings  of  the  Philological  Soci 
ety"  has  lately  undertaken  to  prove  that  Chaucer  did  not 
sound  the  final  or  medial  e,  and  throws  us  back  on  the 
old  theory  that  he  wrote  "  riding-rime,"  that  is,  verse  to 
the  eye  and  not  the  ear.  This  he  attempts  to  do  by 
showing  that  the  Anglo-Norman  poets  themselves  did 
not  sound  the  e,  or,  at  any  rate,  were  not  uniform  in  so 
doing.  It  should  seem  a  sufficient  answer  to  this  merely 
to  ask  whence  modern  French  poetry  derived  its  rules  of 
pronunciation  so  like  those  of  Chaucer,  so  different  from 
those  of  prose.  But  it  is  not  enough  to  prove  that 
some  of  the  Anglo-Norman  rhymers  were  bad  versifiers. 
Let  us  look  for  examples  in  the  works  of  the  best  poet 
among  them  all,  Marie  de  France,  with  whose  works 
Chaucer  was  certainly  familiar.  What  was  her  practice  ? 
I  open  at  random  and  find  enough  to  overthrow  the 
whole  theory  :  — 

"Odsafille*kelecela  — 
Tut  li  curages  li  fremi  — 
Di  mei,  fet-ele  par  ta  fei  — 
La  Dameisele  1'aporta  — 
Kar  ne  li  sembla  mie  boens  — 
La  dame  1'aveit  apelee  — 
Et  la  mere  1'areisuna." 

But  how  about  the  elision  1 

"  Le  pali'  esgarde  stir  le  lit  — 
Et  ele'  est  devant  li  ale'e  — 
Bele'  amie  [cf.  mie,  above]  ne'il  me  celez. 
La  dame'  ad  sa  fille'  amende." 

These  are  all  on  a  single  page  f,  and  there  are  some  to 

*  Whence  came,  pray,  the  Elizabethan  commandement,  chapelain, 
surety,  and  a  score  of  others?  Whence  the  Scottish  bonny,  and  so 
many  English  words  of  Romance  derivation  ending  in  yf 

t  Poesies  de  Marie  de  France,  Tome  I.  p.  1G8. 


272  CHAUCER. 

spare.      How   about   the   hiatus  ?     On  the  same  page 
I  find,  — 

"Kar  1'Erceveske  t  estoit  — 
Pur  eus  beneistre'  e  enseiner." 

What  was  the  practice  of  Wace  1     Again  I  open  at  ran 
dom. 

"  N'osa  remaindre'  en  Normandie, 

Maiz,  quant  la  guerre  fu  finie, 

Od  sou  herneiz  en  Puille'  ala — 

Cil  de  Baieniis  lungement — 

Ne  ("1  nes  pout  par  force  prendre  — 

Dune  la  vile  mult  amendout, 

Prisons  e  preies  amenout."  * 

Again  we  have  the  sounded  final  e,  the  elision,  and  the 
hiatus.  But  what  possible  reason  is  there  for  supposing 
that  Chaucer  would  go  to  obscure  minstrels  to  learn  the 
rules  of  French  versification  ?  Nay,  why  are  we  to  sup 
pose  that  he  followed  them  at  all  1  In  his  case  as  in 
theirs,  as  in  that  of  the  Italians,  with  the  works  of  whose 
two  greater  poets  he  was  familiar,  it  was  the  language 
itself  and  the  usages  of  pronunciation  that  guided  the 
poet,  and  not  arbitrary  laws  laid  down  by  a  synod  of 
Tersemakers.  Chaucer's  verse  differs  from  that  of  Gower 
and  Lydgate  precisely  as  the  verse  of  Spenser  differs 
•from  that  of  Gascoigne,  and  for  the  same  reason,  —  that 
he  was  a  great  poet,  to  whom  measure  was  a  natural  ve 
hicle.  But  admitting  that  he  must  have  formed  his 
style  on  the  French  poets,  would  he  not  have  gone  for 
lessons  to  the  most  famous  and  popular  among  them,  — 
the  authors  of  the  "  Roman  de  la  Rose  "  ?  Wherever 
you  open  that  poem,  you  find  Guillaume  de  Lorris  and 
Jean  de  Meung  following  precisely  the  same  method,  —  a 
method  not  in  the  least  arbitrary,  but  inherent  in  the 
material  which  they  wrought.  The  e  sounded  or  ab 
sorbed  under  the  same  conditions,  the  same  slurring  of 

*  Le  Roman  de  la  Rose,  Tome  II.  p.  390. 


CHAUCER.  273 

diphthongs,  the  same  occasional  hiatus,  the  same  compres 
sion  of  several  vowels  into  one  sound  where  they  imme 
diately  follow  each  other.  Shakespeare  and  Milton  would 
supply  examples  enough  of  all  these  practices  that  seem 
so  incredible  to  those  who  write  about  versification  with 
out  sufficient  fineness  of  sense  to  feel  the  difference  be 
tween  Ben  Jonson's  blank  verse  and  Marlow's.  Some 
men  are  verse-deaf  as  others  are  color-blind,  —  Messrs. 
Malone  and  Guest,  for  example. 

I  try  Rutebeuf  in  the  same  haphazard  way,  and  chance 
brings  me  upon  his  "  Pharisian."  This  poem  is  in  stan 
zas,  the  verses  of  the  first  of  which  have  all  of  them 
masculine  rhymes,  those  of  the  second  feminine  ones,  and 
so  on  in  such  continual  alternation  to  the  end,  as  to  show 
that  it  was  done  with  intention  to  avoid  monotony.  Of 
feminine  rhymes  we  find  ypocrisie,  fame,  justice,  mesure, 
yglise.  But  did  Rutebeuf  mean  so  to  pronounce  them  1 
I  open  again  at  the  poem  of  the  Secrestain,  which  is  writ 
ten  in  regular  octosyllabics,  and  read,  — 

"  Envie'  fet  home  tuer, 
Et  si  fait  bonne  remuer — 
Envie  greve',  envie'  blece, 
Envie'  confont  charite 
Envie'  ocist  humilite, — 
Estoit  en  ce  pa'is  en  vie 
Sanz  orgueil  ere'  et  sanz  envie  — 
La  glorieuse,  dame,  chiere'."  * 

Froissart  was  Chaucer's  contemporary.     What  was  his 

usage  1 

"  J'avoie  fait  en  ce  voiaige 
Et  je  li  di, '  Ma  dame  s'ai-je 
Pour  vous  eu  maint  souvenir'; 
Mais  je  ne  sui  pas  bien  hardis 
De  vous  remonstrer,  dame  chiere, 
Par  quel  art  ne  par  quel  maniere, 
J'ai  e'u  ce  comencement 
De  1'amourous  atouche'ment.' " 

*  Rutebeuf,  Tome  I.  pp.  203  seqq.  304  seqq. 


274  CHAUCER. 

If  we  try  Philippe  Mouskes,  a  mechanical  rhymer,  if 
ever  there  was  one,  and  therefore  the  surer  not  to  let  go 
the  leading-strings  of  rule,  the  result  is  the  same. 

But  Chaucer,  it  is  argued,  was  not  uniform  in  his  prac 
tice.  Would  this  be  likely  1  Certainly  not  with  those  ter 
minations  (like  courtesie)  which  are  questioned,  and  in 
diphthongs  generally.  Dante  took  precisely  the  same 
liberties. 

'Facea  le  stelle  a  noi  parer  piii  radi," 
'  Ne  fu  per  fantasia  giammai  compreso  " 
'  Pot  pi'ovve  dentro  all  'alta  fantasia," 
'  Solea  valor  e  cortesia  trovarsi," 
'  Che  ne  'nvogliava  amor  e  cortesta." 

Here  we  have  fantasl'  and  fantasia,  cortesl'  and  cortesid. 
Even  Pope  has  promiscuous,  obsequious,  as  trisyllables, 
individual  as  a  quadrisyllable,  and  words  like  tapestry, 
opera,  indifferently  as  trochees  or  dactyls  according  to 
their  place  in  the  verse.  Donne  even  goes  so  far  as  to 
make  Cain  a  monosyllable  and  dissyllable  in  the  same 
verse :  — 

"  Sister  and  wife  to  Cain,  Cain  that  first  did  plough." 

The  cscsural  pause  (a  purely  imaginary  thing  in  ac 
centual  metres)  may  be  made  to  balance  a  line  like  this 
of  Donne's, 

"  Are  they  not  like  |  singers  at  doors  for  meat," 

but  we  defy  any  one  by  any  trick  of  voice  to  make  it 
supply  a  missing  syllable  in  what  is  called  our  heroic 
measure,  so  mainly  used  by  Chaucer. 

Enough  and  far  more  than  enough  on  a  question  about 
which  it  is  as  hard  to  be  patient  as  about  the  author 
ship  of  Shakespeare's  plays.  It  is  easy  to  find  all  man 
ner  of  bad  metres  among  these  versifiers,  and  plenty 
of  inconsistencies,  many  or  most  of  them  the  fault  of 
careless  or  ignorant  transcribers,  but  whoever  has  read 


CHAUCER.  275 

them  thoroughly,  and  with  enough  philological  knowledge 
of  cognate  languages  to  guide  him,  is  sure  that  they  at 
least  aimed  at  regularity,  precisely  as  he  is  convinced 
that  Raynouard's  rule  about  singular  and  plural  termi 
nations  has  plenty  of  evidence  to  sustain  it,  despite  the 
numerous  exceptions.  To  show  what  a  bad  versifier 
could  make  out  of  the  same  language  that  Chaucer  used, 
I  copy  one  stanza  from  a  contemporary  poem. 

"  When  Phebus  fresh  was  in  chare  resplendent, 
In  the  moneth  of  May  erly  in  a  morning, 
I  hard  two  lovers  profer  this  argument 
In  the  yeere  of  our  Lord  a  M.  bv  rekening, 
CCCXL.  and  VIII.  yeere  following. 
O  potent  princesse  conserve  true  lovers  all 
And  grant  them  thy  region  and  blisse  celestial."  * 

Here  is  riding-rhyme,  and  on  a  very  hard  horse  too! 
Can  any  one  be  insensible  to  the  difference  between  such 
stuff  as  this  and  the  measure  of  Chaucer  ]  Is  it  possi 
ble  that  with  him  the  one  halting  verse  should  be  the 
rule,  and  the  twenty  musical  ones  the  exception  1  Let 
us  take  heed  to  his  own  words  :  — 

"  And,  for  there  is  so  great  diversite 
In  English,  and  in  writing  of  our  tong, 
So  pray  I  God  f  that  none  miswrite  the 
Ne  the  mismetre  for  defaut  of  tong, 
And  redde  whereso  thou  be  or  elles  song 
That  thou  be  iinderstood  God  I  beseech." 

Yet  more.  Boccaccio's  ottava  rima  is  almost  as  regu 
lar  as  that  of  Tasso.  Was  Chaucer  unconscious  of  this  1 
It  will  be  worth  while  to  compare  a  stanza  of  the  origi 
nal  with  one  of  the  translation. 

"  Era  cortese  Ettore  di  natura 
Pero  vedendo  di  costei  il  gran  pianto, 
Ch  'era  piii  bolla  ch  'altra  creatura, 
Con  pio  parlare  confortolla  alquanto, 

*  From  the  "  Craft  of  Lovers,"  attributed  by  Ritson  to  Lydgate,  but 
too  bad  even  for  him. 

t  Here  the  received  texts  give  "  So  pray  I  to  God."  Cf.  "  But  Rea 
son  said  him."  T.  &  C. 


276  CHAUCER. 

Dicendo,  lascia  con  la  ria  ventura 

Tuo  padre  andar  che  tulti  ha  offeso  tanto, 

E  tu,  sicurn  e  lieta,  senza  noia, 

Mentre  t  'aggrada,  con  noi  rcsta  in  Troia."  * 

"  Now  was  this  Hector  pitous  of  nature, 
And  saw  that  she  was  sorrowful  begon 
And  that  she  was  so  faire  a  creature, 
Of  his  goodnesse  he  gladed  her  anon 
And  said  [saide]  let  your  father's  treason  gon 
Forth  with  mischance,  and  ye  yourself  in  joy 
Dwelleth  with  us  while  [that]  you  list  in  Troy." 

If  the  Italian  were  read  with  the  same  ignorance  that 
has  wreaked  itself  on  Chaucer,  the  riding-rhyme  would 
be  on  its  high  horse  in  almost  every  line  of  Boccaccio's 
stanza.  The  same  might  be  said  of  many  a  verse  in 
Donne's  satires.  Spenser  in  his  eclogues  for  February, 
May,  and  September  evidently  took  it  for  granted  that 
he  had  caught  the  measure  of  Chaucer,  and  it  would  be 
rather  amusing,  as  well  as  instructive,  to  hear  the  main- 
tainers  of  the  hop-skip-and-jump  theory  of  versification 
attempt  to  make  the  elder  poet's  verses  dance  to  the  tune 
for  which  one  of  our  greatest  metrists  (in  his  philological 
deafness)  supposed  their  feet  to  be  trained. 

I  will  give  one  more  example  of  Chaucer's  verse,  again 
making  my  selection  from  one  of  his  less  mature  works. 
He  is  speaking  of  Tarquin :  — 

"  And  ay  the  more  he  was  in  despair 
The  more  he  coveted  and  thought  her  fair; 
His  blinde  lust  was  all  his  coveting. 
On  morrow  when  the  bird  began  to  sing 
Unto  the  siege  he  cometh  full  privily 
And  by  himself  he  walketh  soberly 
The  image  of  her  recording  ahvay  new: 
Thus  lay  her  hair,  and  thus  fresh  was  her  hue, 
Thus  sate,  thus  spake,  thus  span,  this  was  her  cheer, 
Thus  fair  she  was,  and  this  was  her  manure. 
All  this  conceit  his  heart  hath  new  ytake, 
And  as  the  sea,  with  tempest  all  toshake, 

*  Corrected  from  Kissner,  p.  18. 


CHAUCER.  277 

That  after,  when  the  storm  is  all  ago, 
Yet  will  the  water  quap  a  day  or  two, 
Right  so,  though  that  her  forme  were  absent, 
The  pleasance  of  her  forme  was  present." 

And  this  passage  leads  me  to  say  a  few  words  of 
Chaucer  as  a  descriptive  poet ;  for  I  think  it  a  great 
mistake  to  attribute  to  him  any  properly  dramatic 
power,  as  some  have  done.  Even  Herr  Hertzberg,  in 
his  remarkably  intelligent  essay,  is  led  a  little  astray  on 
this  point  by  his  enthusiasm.  Chaucer  is  a  great  narra 
tive  poet ;  and,  in  this  species  of  poetry,  though  the 
author's  personality  should  never  be  obtruded,  it  yet 
unconsciously  pervades  the  whole,  and  communicates  an 
individual  quality,  —  a  kind  of  flavor  of  its  own.  This 
very  quality,  and  it  is  one  of  the  highest  in  its  way  and 
place,  would  be  fatal  to  all  dramatic  force.  The  narra 
tive  poet  is  occupied  with  his  characters  as  picture,  with 
their  grouping,  even  their  costume,  it  may  be,  and  he 
feels  for  and  with  them  instead  of  being  they  for  the 
moment,  as  the  dramatist  must  always  be.  The  story 
teller  must  possess  the  situation  perfectly  in  all  its  de 
tails,  while  the  imagination  of  the  dramatist  must  be 
possessed  and  mastered  by  it.  The  latter  puts  before 
us  the  very  passion  or  emotion  itself  in  its  iitmost  inten 
sity  ;  the  former  gives  them,  not  in  their  primary  form, 
but  in  that  derivative  one  which  they  have  acquired  by 
passing  through  his  own  mind  and  being  modified  by  his 
reflection.  The  deepest  pathos  of  the  drama,  like  the 
quiet  "  no  more  but  so  1 "  with  which  Shakespeare  tells 
us  that  Ophelia's  heart  is  bursting,  is  sudden  as  a  stab, 
while  in  narrative  it  is  more  or  less  suffused  with  pity, 
—  a  feeling  capable  of  prolonged  sustention.  This  pres 
ence  of  the  author's  own  sympathy  is  noticeable  in  all 
Chaucer's  pathetic  passages,  as,  for  instance,  in  the 
lamentation  of  Constance  over  her  child  in  the  "  Man  of 


278  CHAUCEU. 

Law's  Tale."  When  he  comes  to  the  sorrow  of  his  story, 
he  seems  to  croon  over  his  thoughts,  to  soothe  them  and 
dwell  upon  them  with  a  kind  of  pleased  compassion,  as 
a  child  treats  a  wounded  bird  which  he  fears  to  grasp  too 
tightly,  and  yet  cannot  make  up  his  heart  wholly  to  let 
go.  It  is  true  also  of  his  humor  that  it  pervades  his 
comic  tales  like  sunshine,  and  never  dazzles  the  atten 
tion  by  a  sudden  flash.  Sometimes  he  brings  it  in  par 
enthetically,  and  insinuates  a  sarcasm  so  slyly  as  almost 
to  slip  by  without  our  notice,  as  where  he  satirizes  pro 
vincialism  by  the  cock 

"  Who  knew  by  nature  each  ascension 
Of  the  equinoctial  in  his  native  town." 

Sometimes  he  turns  round  upon  himself  and  smiles  at  a 
trip  he  has  made  into  fine  writing  :  — 

"  Till  that  the.brighte  sun  had  lost  his  hue, 
Forth'  orisont  had  reft  the  sun  his  light, 
(This  is  as  much  to  sayen  as  '  it  was  night.') " 

Nay,  sometimes  it  twinkles  roguishly  through  his  very 
tears,  as  in  the 

" '  Why  wouldest  thou  be  dead,'  these  women  cry, 
'  Thou  haddest  gold  enough  —  and  Emily?  '  " 

that  follows  so  close  upon  the  profoundly  tender  despair 
of  Arcite's  farewell  :  — 

"  What  is  this  world  ?    What  asken  men  to  have  ? 
Now  with  his  love  now  in  the  colde  grave 
Alone  withouten any  company! " 

The  power  of  diffusion  without  being  diffuse  would  seem 
to  be  the  highest  merit  of  narration,  giving  it  that  easy 
flow  which  is  so  delightful.  Chaucer's  descriptive  style 
is  remarkable  for  its  lowness  of  tone,  —  for  that  com 
bination  of  energy  with  simplicity  which  is  among  the 
rarest  gifts  in  literature.  Perhaps  all  is  said  in  saying 
that  he  has  style  at  all,  for  that  consists  mainly  in  the 
absence  of  undue  emphasis  and  exaggeration,  in  the  clear 


CHAUCER.  279 

uniform  pitch  which  penetrates  our  interest  and  retains 
it,  where  mere  loudness  would  only  disturb  and  irritate. 
Not  that  Chaucer  cannot  be  intense,  too,  on  occasion  ; 
but  it  is  with  a  quiet  intensity  of  his  own,  that  comes  in 
as  it  were  by  accident. 

"  Upon  a  thicke  palfrey,  paper-white, 
With  saddle  red  embroidered  with  delight, 
Sits  Dido: 

And  she  is  fair  as  is  the  brighte  morrow 
That  healeth  sicke  folk  of  nightes  sorrow. 
Upon  a  courser  startling  as  the  fire, 


Pandarus,  looking  at  Troilus, 

"  Took  up  a  light  and  found  his  countenance 
As  for  to  look  upon  an  old  romance." 

With  Chaucer  it  is  always  the  thing  itself  and  not  the 
description  of  it  that  is  the  main  object.  His  picturesque 
bits  are  incidental  to  the  story,  glimpsed  in  passing  ;  they 
never  stop  the  way.  His  key  is  so  low  that  his  high 
lights  are  never  obtrusive.  His  imitators,  like  Leigh 
Hunt,  and  Keats  in  his  "  Endymion,"  missing  the  nice 
gradation  with  which  the  master  toned  everything  down, 
become  streaky.  Hogarth,  who  reminds  one  of  him  in 
the  variety  and  natural  action  of  his  figures,  is  like  him 
also  in  the  subdued  brilliancy  of  his  coloring.  When 
Chaucer  condenses,  it  is  because  his  conception  is  vivid. 
He  does  not  need  to  personify  Revenge,  for  personifica 
tion  is  but  the  subterfuge  of  unimaginative  and  profes 
sional  poets  ;  but  he  embodies  the  very  passion  itself  in 
a  verse  that  makes  us  glance  over  our  shoulder  as  if  we 
heard  a  stealthy  tread  behind  us  :  — 

"  The  smiler  with  the  knife  hid  under  the  cloak."  * 

And  yet  how  unlike  is  the  operation  of  the  imaginative 
faculty  in  him  and  Shakespeare  !  When  the  latter  de- 

*  Compare  this  with  the  Mumbo-Jumbo  Revenge  in  Collins's  Ode. 


280  CHAUCER. 

scribes,  his  epithets  imply  always  an  impression  on  the 
moral  sense  (so  to  speak)  of  the  person  who  hears  or  sees. 
The  sun  "flatters  the  mountain-tops  with  sovereign  eye  " ; 
the  bending  "  weeds  lacquey  the  dull  stream " ;  the 
shadow  of  the  falcon  "  couch  eth  the  fowl  below  " ;  the 
smoke  is  "  helpless  "  ;  when  Tarquin  enters  the  chamber 
of  Lucrece  "  the  threshold  grates  the  door  to  have  him 
heard."  His  outward  sense  is  merely  a  window  through 
which  the  metaphysical  eye  looks  forth,  and  his  mind 
passes  over  at  once  from  the  simple  sensation  to  the 
complex  meaning  of  it,  —  feels  with  the  object  instead  of 
merely  feeling  it.  His  imagination  is  forever  drama 
tizing.  Chaucer  gives  only  the  direct  impression  made 
on  the  eye  or  ear.  He  was  the  first  great  poet  who 
really  loved  outward  nature  as  the  source  of  conscious 
pleasurable  emotion.  The  Troubadour  hailed  the  return 
of  spring ;  but  with  him  it  was  a  piece  of  empty  ritual 
ism.  Chaucer  took  a  true  delight  in  the  new  green  of 
the  leaves  and  the  return  of  singing  birds,  —  a  delight 
as  simple  as  that  of  Robin  Hood  :  — 

"  In  summer  when  the  shaws  be  sheen, 

And  leaves  be  large  and  long, 
It  is  full  merry  in  fair  forest 
To  hear  the  small  birds'  song." 

He  has  never  so  much  as  heard  of  the  "  burthen  and  the 
mystery  of  all  this  unintelligible  world."  His  flowers 
and  trees  and  birds  have  never  bothered  themselves 
with  Spinoza.  He  himself  sings  more  like  a  bird  than 
any  other  poet,  because  it  never  occurred  to  him,  as  to 
Goethe,  that  he  ought  to  do  so.  He  pours  himself  out 
in  sincere  joy  and  thankfulness.  When  we  compare  Spen 
ser's  imitations  of  him  with  the  original  passages,  we  feel 
that  the  delight  of  the  later  poet  was  more  in  the  ex 
pression  than  in  the  thing  itself.  Nature  with  him  is  only 
good  to  be  transfigured  by  art.  We  walk  among  Chau- 


CHAUCER.  281 

cer's  sights  and  sounds ;  we  listen  to  Spenser's  musical 
reproduction  of  them.  In  the  same  way,  the  pleasure 
which  Chaucer  takes  in  telling  his  stories  has  in  itself 
the  effect  of  consummate  skill,  and  makes  us  follow  all 
the  windings  of  his  fancy  with  sympathetic  interest.  His 
best  tales  run  on  like  one  of  our  inland  rivers,  sometimes 
hastening  a  little  and  turning  upon  themselves  in  eddies 
that  dimple  without  retarding  the  current ;  sometimes 
loitering  smoothly,  while  here  and  there  a  quiet  thought, 
a  tender  feeling,  a  pleasant  image,  a  golden-hearted  verse, 
opens  quietly  as  a  water-lily,  to  float  on  the  surface  with 
out  breaking  it  into  ripple.  The  vulgar  intellectual  pal 
ate  hankers  after  the  titillation  of  foaming  phrase,  and 
thinks  nothing  good  for  much  that  does  not  go  off  with  a 
pop  like  a  champagne  cork.  The  mellow  suavity  of  more 
precious  vintages  seems  insipid  :  but  the  taste,  in  pro 
portion  as  it  refines,  learns  to  appreciate  the  indefinable 
flavor,  too  subtile  for  analysis.  A  manner  has  prevailed 
of  late  in  which  every  other  word  seems  to  be  under 
scored  as  in  a  school-girl's  letter.  The  poet  seems  intent 
on  showing  his  sinew,  as  if  the  power  of  the  slim  Apollo 
lay  in  the  girth  of  his  biceps.  Force  for  the  mere  sake 
of  force  ends  like  Milo,  caught  and  held  mockingly  fast 
by  the  recoil  of  the  log  he  undertook  to  rive.  In  the  race 
of  fame,  there  are  a  score  capable  of  brilliant  spurts  for 
one  who  comes  in  winner  after  a  steady  pull  with  wind 
and  muscle  to  spare.  Chaucer  never  shows  any  signs  of 
effort,  and  it  is  a  main  proof  of  his  excellence  that  he  can 
be  so  inadequately  sampled  by  detached  passages,  —  by 
single  lines  taken  away  from  the  connection  in  which 
they  contribute  to  the  general  effect.  He  has  that  con 
tinuity  of  thought,  that  evenly  prolonged  power,  and  that 
delightful  equanimity,  which  characterize  the  higher 
orders  of  mind.  There  is  something  in  him  of  the  disin 
terestedness  that  made  the  Greeks  masters  in  art.  His 


282  CHAUCER. 

phrase  is  never  importunate.  His  simplicity  is  that  of 
elegance,  not  of  poverty.  The  quiet  unconcern  with 
which  he  says  his  best  things  is  peculiar  to  him  among 
English  poets,  though  Goldsmith,  Addison,  and  Thack 
eray  have  approached  it  in  prose.  He  prattles  inad 
vertently  away,  and  all  the  while,  like  the  princess  in  the 
story,  lets  fall  a  pearl  at  every  other  word.  It  is  such  a 
piece  of  good  luck  to  be  natural !  It  is  the  good  gift 
which  the  fairy  godmother  brings  to  her  prime  favorites 
in  the  cradle.  If  not  genius,  it  is  alone  what  makes 
genius  amiable  in  the  arts.  If  a  man  have  it  not,  he  will 
never  find  it,  for  when  it  is  sought  it  is  gone. 

When  Chaucer  describes  anything,  it  is  commonly  by 
one  of  those  simple  and  obvious  epithets  or  qualities  that 
are  so  easy  to  miss.  Is  it  a  woman  ?  He  tells  us  she 
is  fresh ;  that  she  has  glad  eyes  ;  that  "  every  day  her 
beauty  newed  "  ;  that 

"  Methought  all  fellowship  as  naked 
Withouten  her  that  I  saw  once, 
As  a  corone  without  the  stones." 

Sometimes  he  describes  amply  by  the  merest  hint,  as 
where  the  Friar,  before  setting  himself  softly  down, 
drives  away  the  cat.  We  know  without  need  of  more 
words  that  he  has  chosen  the  snuggest  corner.  In  some 
of  his  early  poems  he  sometimes,  it  is  true,  falls  into  the 
catalogue  style  of  his  contemporaries ;  but  after  he  had 
found  his  genius  he  never  particularizes  too  much,  —  a 
process  as  deadly  to  all  effect  as  an  explanation  to  a  pun. 
The  first  stanza  of  the  "  Clerk's  Tale  "  gives  us  a  land 
scape  whose  stately  choice  of  objects  shows  a  skill  in 
composition  worthy  of  Claude,  the  last  artist  who  painted 
nature  epically :  — 

"  There  is  at  the  west  ende  of  Itaile, 
Down  at  the  foot  of  Vesulus  the  cold, 
A  lusty  plain  abundant  of  vitaile, 


CHAUCER.  283 

Where  many  a  tower  and  town  thou  may'st  behold 
That  founded  were  in  time  of  fathers  old, 
And  many  another  delitable  sight: 
And  Saluces  this  noble  country  hight." 

The  Pre-Raphaelite  style  of  landscape  entangles  the  eye 
among  the  obtrusive  weeds  and  grass-blades  of  the  fore 
ground  which,  in  looking  at  a  real  bit  of  scenery,  we 
overlook ;  but  what  a  sweep  of  vision  is  here  !  and  what 
happy  generalization  in  the  sixth  verse  as  the  poet  turns 
away  to  the  business  of  his  story  !  The  whole  is  full  of 
open  air. 

But  it  is  in  his  characters,  especially,  that  his  manner 
is  large  and  free ;  for  he  is  painting  history,  though  with 
the  fidelity  of  portrait.  He  brings  out  strongly  the 
essential  traits,  characteristic  of  the  genus  rather  than 
of  the  individual.  The  Merchant  who  keeps  so  steady  a 
countenance  that 

"  There  wist  no  wight  that  he  was  e'er  in  debt," 

the  Sergeant  at  Law,  "  who  seemed  busier  than  he  was," 
the  Doctor  of  Medicine,  whose  "  study  was  but  little  on 
the  Bible,"  —  in  all  these  cases  it  is  the  type  and  not  the 
personage  that  fixes  his  attention.  William  Blake  says 
truly,  though  he  expresses  his  meaning  somewhat  clum 
sily,  "  the  characters  of  Chaucer's  Pilgrims  are  the  char 
acters  which  compose  all  ages  and  nations.  Some  of  the 
names  and  titles  are  altered  by  time,  but  the  characters 
remain  forever  unaltered,  and  consequently  they  are  the 
physiognomies  and  lineaments  of  universal  human  life, 
beyond  which  Nature  never  steps.  Names  alter,  things 
never  alter.  As  Newton  numbered  the  stars,  and  as 
Linnaeus  numbered  the  plants,  so  Chaucer  numbered  the 
classes  of  men."  In  his  outside  accessaries,  it  is  true,  he 
sometimes  seems  as  minute  as  if  he  were  illuminating  a 
missal.  Nothing  escapes  his  sure  eye  for  the  picturesque, 
—  the  cut  of  the  beard,  the  soil  of  armor  on  the  buff 


284  CHAUCER. 

jerkin,  the  rust  on  the  sword,  the  expression  of  the  eve. 
But  in  this  he  has  an  artistic  purpose.  It  is  here  thnt 
he  individualizes,  and,  while  every  touch  harmonizes 
with  and  seems  to  complete  the  moral  features  of  the 
character,  makes  us  feel  that  we  are  among  living  men, 
and  not  the  abstracted  images  of  men.  Crabbe  adds 
particular  to  particular,  scattering  rather  than  deepening 
the  impression  of  reality,  and  making  us  feel  as  if  every 
man  were  a  species  by  himself;  but  Chaucer,  never  for 
getting  the  essential  sameness  of  human  nature,  makes 
it  possible,  and  even  probable,  that  his  motley  characters 
should  meet  on  a  common  footing,  while  he  gives  to 
each  the  expression  that  belongs  to  him,  the  result  of 
special  circumstance  or  training.  Indeed,  the  absence  of 
any  suggestion  of  caste  cannot  fail  to  strike  any  reader 
familiar  with  the  literature  on  which  he  is  supposed 
to  have  formed  himself.  No  characters  are  at  once  so 
broadly  human  and  so  definitely  outlined  as  his.  Belong 
ing,  some  of  them,  to  extinct  types,  they  continue  con 
temporary  and  familiar  forever.  So  wide  is  the  difference 
between  knowing  a  great  many  men  and  that  knowledge 
of  human  nature  which  comes  of  sympathetic  insight  and 
not  of  observation  alone. 

It  is  this  power  of  sympathy  which  makes  Chaucer's 
satire  so  kindly,  —  more  so,  one  is  tempted  to  say,  than 
the  panegyric  of  Pope.  Intellectual  satire  gets  its  force 
from  personal  or  moral  antipathy,  and  measures  offences 
by  some  rigid  conventional  standard.  Its  mouth  waters 
over  a  galling  word,  and  it  loves  to  say  Thou,  pointing 
out  its  victim  to  public  scorn.  Indigiuitio  facit  versus, 
it  boasts,  though  they  might  as  often  be  fathered  on 
envy  or  hatred.  But  imaginative  satire,  warmed  through 
and  through  with  the  genial  leaven  of  humor,  smiles 
half  sadly  and  murmurs  We.  Chaucer  either  makes  one 
knave  betray  another,  through  a  natural  jealousy  of 


CHAUCER.  285 

competition,  or  else  expose  himself  with  a  naivete  of 
good-humored  cynicism  which  amuses  rather  than  dis 
gusts.  In  the  former  case  the  butt  has  a  kind  of  claim 
on  our  sympathy ;  in  the  latter,  it  seems  nothing  strange 
if  the  sunny  atmosphere  which  floods  that  road  to  Can 
terbury  should  tempt  anybody  to  throw  off  one  disguise 
after  another  without  suspicion.  With  perfect  tact,  too, 
the  Host  is  made  the  clioragus  in  this  diverse  company, 
and  the  coarse  jollity  of  his  temperament  explains,  if  it 
does  not  excuse,  much  that  would  otherwise  seem  out  of 
keeping.  Surely  nobody  need  have  any  scruples  with 
him. 

Chaucer  seems  to  me  to  have  been  one  of  the  most 
purely  original  of  poets,  as  much  so  in  respect  of  the 
world  that  is  about  us  as  Dante  in  respect  of  that  which 
is  within  \is.  There  had  been  nothing  like  him  before, 
there  has  been  nothing  since.  He  is  original,  not  in  the 
sense  that  he  thinks  and  says  what  nobody  ever  thought 
and  said  before,  and  what  nobody  can  ever  think  and 
say  again,  but  because  he  is  always  natural,  because, 
if  not  always  absolutely  new,  he  is  always  delightfully 
fresh,  because  he  sets  before  us  'the  world  as  it  honestly 
appeared  to  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  and  not  a  world  as  it 
seemed  proper  to  certain  people  that  it  ought  to  appear. 
He  found  that  the  poetry  which  had  preceded  him  had 
been  first  the  expression  of  individual  feeling,  then  of 
class  feeling  as  the  vehicle  of  legend  and  history,  and 
at  last  had  wellnigh  lost  itself  in  chasing  the  mirage  of 
allegory.  Literature  seemed  to  have  passed  through 
the  natural  stages  which  at  regular  intervals  bring  it  to 
decline.  Even  the  lyrics  of  the  jongleurs  were  all  run 
in  one  mould,  and  the  Pastourelles  of  Northern  France 
had  become  as  artificial  as  the  Pastorals  of  Pope.  The 
Romances  of  chivalry  had  been  made  over  into  prcse, 
and  the  Mdnsine  of  his  contemporary  Jehan  d' Arras  is 


286  CHAUCER. 

the  forlorn  hope  of  the  modern  novel.  Arrived  thus  far 
in  their  decrepitude,  the  monks  endeavored  to  give  them 
a  religious  and  moral  turn  by  allegorizing  them.  Their 
process  reminds  one  of  something  Ulloa  tells  us  of  the 
fashion  in  which  the  Spaniards  converted  the  Mexicans  : 
"  Here  we  found  an  old  man  in  a  cavern  so  extremely 
aged  as  it  was  wonderful,  which  could  neither  see  nor 
go  because  he  was  so  lame  and  crooked.  The  Father, 
Friar  Raimund,  said  it  were  good  (seeing  he  was  so 
aged)  to  make  him  a  Christian  ;  whereupon  we  baptized 
him."  The  monks  found  the  Romances  in  the  same 
stage  of  senility,  and  gave  them  a  saving  sprinkle  with 
the  holy  water  of  allegory.  Perhaps  they  were  only 
trying  to  turn  the  enemy's  own  weapons  against  him 
self,  for  it  was  the  free-thinking  "  Romance  of  the  Rose  " 
that  more  than  anything  else  had  made  allegory  fashion 
able.  Plutarch  tells  us  that  an  allegory  is  to  say  one 
thing  where  another  is  meant,  and  this  might  have  been 
needful  for  the  personal  security  of  Jean  de  Meung,  as 
afterwards  for  that  of  his  successor,  Rabelais.  But, 
except  as  a  means  of  evading  the  fagot,  the  method  has 
few  recommendations.  It  reverses  the  true  office  of 
poetry  by  making  the  real  unreal.  It  is  imagination 
endeavoring  to  recommend  itself  to  the  imderstanding 
by  means  of  cuts.  If  an  author  be  in  such  deadly 
earnest,  or  if  his  imagination  be  of  such  creative  vigor 
as  to  project  real  figures  when  it  meant  to  cast  only  a 
shadow  upon  vapor ;  if  the  true  spirit  come,  at  once 
obsequious  and  terrible,  when  the  conjurer  has  drawn 
his  circle  and  gone  through  with  his  incantations  merely 
to  produce  a  proper  frame  of  mind  in  his  audience,  as 
was  the  case  with  Dante,  there  is  no  longer  any  ques 
tion  of  allegory  as  the  word  and  thing  are  commonly 
understood.  But  with  all  secondary  poets,  as  with 
Spenser  for  example,  the  allegory  does  not  become  of 


CHAUCER.  287 

one  substance  with  the  poetry,  but  is  a  kind  of  carven 
frame  for  it,  whose  figures  lose  their  meaning,  as  they 
cease  to  be  contemporary.  It  was  not  a  style  that  could 
have  much  attraction  for  a  nature  so  sensitive  to  the 
actual,  so  observant  of  it,  so  interested  by  it  as  that  of 
Chaucer.  He  seems  to  have  tried  his  hand  at  all  the 
forms  in  vogue,  and  to  have  arrived  in  his  old  age  at  the 
truth,  essential  to  all  really  great  poetry,  that  his  own 
instincts  Avere  his  safest  guides,  that  there  is  nothing 
deeper  in  life  than  life  itself,  and  that  to  conjure  an 
allegorical  significance  into  it  was  to  lose  sight  of  its 
real  meaning.  He  of  all  men  could  not  say  one  thing 
and  mean  another,  unless  by  way  of  humorous  contrast. 

In  thus  turning  frankly  arid  gayly  to  the  actual  world, 
and  drinking  inspiration  from  sources  open  to  all;  in 
turning  away  from  a  colorless  abstraction  to  the  solid 
earth  and  to  emotions  common  to  every  pulse ;  in  dis 
covering  that  to  make  the  best  of  nature,  and  not  to 
grope  vaguely  after  something  better  than  nature,  was 
the  true  office  of  Art ;  in  insisting  on  a  definite  purpose, 
on  veracity,  cheerfulness,  and  simplicity,  Chaucer  shows 
himself  the  true  father  and  founder  of  what  is  character 
istically  English  literature.  He  has  a  hatred  of  cant  as 
hearty  as  Dr.  Johnson's,  though  he  has  a  slier  way  of 
showing  it ;  he  has  the  placid  common-sense  of  Franklin, 
the  sweet,  grave  humor  of  Addison,  the  exquisite  taste 
of  Gray ;  but  the  whole  texture  of  his  mind,  though  its 
substance  seem  plain  and  grave,  shows  itself  at  every 
turn  iridescent  with  poetic  feeling  like  shot  silk.  Above 
all,  he  has  an  eye  for  character  that  seems  to  have  caught 
at  once  not  only  its  mental  and  physical  features,  but 
even  its  expression  in  variety  of  costume,  —  an  eye,  in 
deed,  second  only,  if  it  should  be  called  second  in  some 
respects,  to  that  of  Shakespeare. 

I  know  of  nothing  that  may  be  compared  with  the 


288  CHAUCER. 

prologue  to  the  "Canterbury  Tales,"  and  with  that  to  the 
story  of  the  "  Chanon's  Yeoman"  before  Chaucer.  Char 
acters  and  portraits  from  real  life  had  never  been  drawn 
with  such  discrimination,  or  with  such  variety,  never 
with  such  bold  precision  of  outline,  and  with  such  a 
lively  sense  of  the  picturesque.  His  Parson  is  still  un 
matched,  though  Dry  den  and  Goldsmith  have  both  tried 
their  hands  in  emulation  of  him.  And  the  humor  also 
in  its  suavity,  its  perpetual  presence  and  its  shy  unob- 
trusiveness,  is  something  wholly  new  in  literature.  For 
anything  that  deserves  to  be  called  like  it  in  English  we 
must  wait  for  Henry  Fielding. 

Chaucer  is  the  first  great  poet  who  has  treated  To-day 
as  if  it  were  as  good  as  Yesterday,  the  first  wt>o  held  up 
a  mirror  to  contemporary  life  in  its  infinite  vaiisty  of 
high  and  low,  of  humor  and  pathos.  But  he  reflected 
life  in  its  large  sense  as  the  life  of  men,  from  the  knight 
to  the  ploughman,  —  the  life  of  every  day  as  it  is  made 
up  of  that  curious  compound  of  human  nature  with 
manners.  The  very  form  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales  "  was 
imaginative.  The  garden  of  Boccaccio,  the  supper-party 
of  Grazzini,  and  the  voyage  of  Giraldi  make  a  good  enough 
thread  for  their  stories,  but  exclude  all  save  equals  and 
friends,  exclude  consequently  human  nature  in  its  wider 
meaning.  But  by  choosing  a  pilgrimage,  Chaucer  puts 
us  on  a  plane  where  all  men  are  equal,  with  souls  to  be 
saved,  and  with  another  world  in  view  that  abolishes  all 
distinctions.  By  this  choice,  and  by  making  the  Host 
of  the  Tabard  always  the  central  figure,  he  has  happily 
united  the  two  most  familiar  emblems  of  life,  —  the 
short  journey  and  the  inn.  We  find  more  and  more  as 
we  study  him  that  he  rises  quietly  from  the  conventional 
to  the  universal,  and  may  fairly  take  his  place  with 
Homer  in  virtue  of  the  breadth  of  his  humanity. 

In  spite  of  some  external  stains,  which  those  who 


CHAUCER.  289 

have  studied  the  influence  of  manners  will  easily  account 
for  without  imputing  them  to  any  moral  depravity,  we 
feel  that  we  can  join  the  pure-minded  Spenser  in  calling 
him  "  most  sacred,  happy  spirit."  If  character  may  be 
divined  from  works,  he  was  a  good  man,  genial,  sincere, 
hearty,  temperate  of  mind,  more  wise,  perhaps,  for  this 
world  than  the  next,  but  thoroughly  humane,  and  friend 
ly  with  God  and  men.  I  know  not  how  to  sum  up  what 
we  feel  about  him  better  than  by  saying  (what  would 
have  pleased  most  one  who  was  indifferent  to  fame)  that 
we  love  him  more  even  than  we  admire.  We  are  sure 
that  here  was  a  true  brother-man  so  kindly  that,  in  his 
"  House  of  Fame,"  after  naming  the  great  poets,  he 
throws  in  a  pleasant  word  for  the  oaten-pipes 

"  Of  the  little  herd-grooms 
That  keepen  beasts  among  the  brooms." 

No  better  inscription  can  be  written  on  the  first  page  of 
his  works  than  that  which  he  places  over  the  gate  in 
his  "  Assembly  of  Fowls,"  and  which  contrasts  so  sweetly 
with  the  stern  lines  of  Dante  from  which  they  were 
imitated :  — 

"  Through  me  men  go  into  the  blissful  place 
Of  the  heart's  heal  and  deadly  woundes'  cure; 
Through  me  men  go  unto  the  well  of  Grace, 
Where  green  and  lusty  May  doth  ever  endure ; 
This  is  the  way  to  all  good  aventure ; 
Be  glad,  thou  Reader,  and  thy  sorrow  offcast, 
All  open  am  I,  pass  in,  and  speed  thee  fast!  " 


13 


LIBRARY  OF  OLD  AUTHORS.* 


MANY  of  our  older  readers  can  remember  the  an 
ticipation  with  which  they  looked  for  each  suc 
cessive  volume  of  the  late  Dr.  Young's  excellent  series 
of  old  English  prose-writers,  and  the  delight  with  which 
they  carried  it  home,  fresh  from  the  press  and  the  bind 
ery  in  its  appropriate  livery  of  evergreen.  To  most  of 
us  it  was  our  first  introduction  to  the  highest  society 
of  letters,  and  we  still  feel  grateful  to  the  departed 
scholar  who  gave  us  to  share  the  conversation  of  such 
men  as  Latimer,  More,  Sidney,  Taylor,  Browne,  Fuller, 
and  Walton.  What  a  sense  of  security  in  an  old  book 
which  Time  has  criticised  for  us  !  What  a  precious  feel 
ing  of  seclusion  in  having  a  double  wall  of  centuries 
between  us  and  the  heats  and  clamors  of  contemporary 
literature  !  How  limpid  seems  the  thought,  how  pure 
the  old  wine  of  scholarship  that  has  been  settling  for  so 
many  generations  in  those  silent  crypts  and  Falernian 
amphorae  of  the  Past !  No  other  writers  speak  to  us 
with  the  authority  of  those  whose  ordinary  speech  was 
that  of  our  translation  of  the  Scriptures  ;  to  no  modern 
is  that  frank  unconsciousness  possible  which  was  natural 
to  a  period  when  yet  reviews  were  not ;  and  no  later 
style  breathes  that  country  charm  characteristic  of  days 
ere  the  metropolis  had  drawn  all  literary  activity  to  it 
self,  and  the  trampling  feet  of  the  multitude  had  banished 
the  lark  and  the  daisy  from  the  fresh  privacies  of  lan- 

*  London  :   John  Russell  Smith.    1856  -  64. 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  291 

guage.  Truly,  as  compared  with  the  present,  these  old 
voices  seem  to  come  from  the  morning  fields  and  not  the 
paved  thoroughfares  of  thought. 

Even  the  "Retrospective  Review"  continues  to  be 
good  reading,  in  virtue  of  the  antique  aroma  (for  wine 
only  acquires  its  bouquet  by  age)  which  pervades  its  pages. 
Its  sixteen  volumes  are  so  many  tickets  of  admission  to 
the  vast  and  devious  vaults  of  the  sixteenth  and  seven 
teenth  centuries,  through  which  we  wander,  tasting  a 
thimbleful  of  rich  Canary,  honeyed  Cyprus,  or  subacidu- 
lous  Hock,  from  what  dusty  butt  or  keg  our  fancy 
chooses.  The  years  during  which  this  review  was  pub 
lished  were  altogether  the  most  fruitful  in  genuine  ap 
preciation  of  old  English  literature.  Books  were  prized 
for  their  imaginative  and  not  their  antiquarian  value 
by  young  writers  who  sate  at  the  feet  of  Lamb  and  Cole 
ridge.  Rarities  of  style,  of  thought,  of  fancy,  were 
sought,  rather  than  the  barren  scarcities  of  typography. 
But  another  race  of  men  seems  to  have  sprung  up,  in 
whom  the  futile  enthusiasm  of  the  collector  predomi 
nates,  who  substitute  archseologic  perversity  for  fine- 
nerved  scholarship,  and  the  worthless  profusion  of  the 
curiosity-shop  for  the  sifted  exclusiveness  of  the  cabinet 
of  Art.  They  forget,  in  their  fanaticism  for  antiquity,  that 
the  dust  of  never  so  many  centuries  is  impotent  to  trans 
form  a  curiosity  into  a  gem,  that  only  good  books  absorb 
mellowness  of  tone  from  age,  and  that  a  baptismal  register 
which  proves  a  patriarchal  longevity  (if  existence  be  life) 
cannot  make  mediocrity  anything  but  a  bore,  or  garrulous 
commonplace  entertaining.  There  are  volumes  which 
have  the  old  age  of  Plato,  rich  with  gathering  expe 
rience,  meditation,  and  wisdom,  which  seem  to  have 
sucked  color  and  ripeness  from  the  genial  autumns  of  all 
the  select  intelligences  that  have  steeped  them  in  the 
sunshine  of  their  love  and  appreciation ;  —  these  quaint 


292  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

freaks  of  russet  tell  of  Montaigne  ;  these  stripes  of 
crimson  fire,  of  Shakespeare  ;  this  sober  gold,  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne ;  this  purpling  bloom,  of  Lamb  •  in 
such  fruits  we  taste  the  legendary  gardens  of  Alcinoiis 
and  the  orchards  of  Atlas ;  and  there  are  volumes  again 
•which  can  claim  only  the  inglorious  senility  of  Old  Parr 
or  older  Jenkins,  which  have  outlived  their  half-dozen  of 
kings  to  be  the  prize  of  showmen  and  treasuries  of  the 
born-to-be-forgotten  trifles  of  a  hundred  years  ago. 

We  confess  a  bibliothecarian  avarice  that  gives  all 
books  a  value  in  our  eyes ;  there  is  for  us  a  recondite 
wisdom  in  the.  phrase,  "  A  book  is  a  book  " ;  from  the 
time  when  we  made  the  first  catalogue  of  our  library, 
in  which  "Bible,  large,  1  vol.,"  and  "Bible,  small,  1  vol.," 
asserted  their  alphabetic  individuality  and  were  the  sole 
.5s  in  our  little  hive,  we  have  had  a  weakness  even  for 
those  checker-board  volumes  that  only  fill  up  ;  we  can 
not  breathe  the  thin  air  of  that  Pepysian  self-denial, 
that  Himalayan  selectness,  which,  content  with  one  book 
case,  would  have  no  tomes  in  it  but  porphyroycniti,  books 
of  the  bluest  blood,  making  room  for  choicer  new-comers 
by  a  continuous  ostracism  to  the  garret  of  present  in 
cumbents.  There  is  to  us  a  sacredness  in  a  volume, 
however  dull;  we  live  over  again  the  author's  lonely 
labors  and  tremulous  hopes  ;  we  see  him,  on  his  first 
appearance  after  parturition,  "  as  well  as  could  be  ex 
pected,"  a  nervous  sympathy  yet  surviving  between  the 
late-severed  umbilical  cord  and  the  wondrous  offspring, 
doubtfully  entering  the  Mermaid,  or  the  Devil  Tavern, 
or  the  Coffee-house  of  Will  or  Button,  blushing  under 
the  eye  of  Ben  or  Dryden  or  Addison,  as  if  they  must 
needs  know  him  for  the  author  of  the  "  Modest  Enquiry 
into  the  Present  State  of  Dramatique  Poetry,"  or  of  the 
"  Unities  briefly  considered  by  Philomusus,"  of  which 
they  have  never  heard  and  never  will  hear  so  much  as 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  293 

the  names ;  we  see  the  country-gentlemen  (sole  cause  of 
its  surviving  to  our  day)  who  buy  it  as  a  book  no  gen 
tleman's  library  can  be  complete  without ;  we  see  the 
spendthrift  heir,  whose  horses  and  hounds  and  Pharaonic 
troops  of  friends,  drowned  in  a  Red  Sea  of  claret,  bring 
it  to  the  hammer,  the  tall  octavo  in  tree-calf  following 
the  ancestral  oaks  of  the  park.  Such  a  volume  is  sacred 
to  us.  But  it  must  be  the  original  foundling  of  the 
book-stall,  the  engraved  blazon  of  some  extinct  baron 
etcy  within  its  cover,  its  leaves  enshrining  memorial- 
flowers  of  some  passion  which  the  churchyard  smothered 
ere  the  Stuarts  were  yet  discrowned,  suggestive  of  the 
trail  of  laced  ruffles,  burnt  here  and  there  with  ashes 
from  the  pipe  of  some  dozing  poet,  its  binding  worn 
and  weather-stained,  that  has  felt  the  inquisitive  finger, 
perhaps,  of  Malone,  or  thrilled  to  the  touch  of  Lamb, 
doubtful  between  desire  and  the  odd  sixpence.  When 
it  comes  to  a  question  of  reprinting,  we  are  more  choice. 
The  new  duodecimo  is  bald  and  bare,  indeed,  compared 
with  its  battered  prototype  that  could  draw  us  with  a 
single  hair  of  association. 

It  is  not  easy  to  divine  the  rule  which  has  governed 
Mr.  Smith  in  making  the  selections  for  his  series.  A 
choice  of  old  authors  should  be  a  florilegium,  and  not  a 
botanist's  hortus  siccus,  to  which  grasses  are  as  important 
as  the  single  shy  blossom  of  a  summer.  The  old-maid 
enly  genius  of  antiquarianism  seems  to  have  presided 
over  the  editing  of  the  "  Library."  We  should  be  in 
clined  to  surmise  that  the  works  to  be  reprinted  had 
been  commonly  suggested  by  gentlemen  with  whom  they 
were  especial  favorites,  or  who  were  ambitious  that  their 
own  names  should  be  signalized  on  the  title-pages  with 
the  suffix  of  EDITOR.  The  volumes  already  published 
are  :  Increase  Mather's  "  Remarkable  Providences "  ; 
the  poems  of  Drummond  of  Hawthornden  ;  the  "  Vis- 


294  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

ions  of  Piers  Ploughman ; "  the  works  in  prose  and 
verse  of  Sir  Thomas  Overbury ;  the  "  Hymns  and  Songs  " 
and  the  "  Hallelujah  "  of  George  Wither ;  the  poems  of 
Southwell ;  Selden's  "  Table-Talk"  ;  the  "  Enchiridion" 
of  Quarles ;  the  dramatic  works  of  Marston,  Webster,  and 
Lilly ;  Chapman's  translation  of  Homer ;  Lovelace,  and 
four  volumes  of  "Early  English  Poetry"!  The  vol 
ume  of  Mather  is  curious  and  entertaining,  and  fit  to 
stand  on  the  same  shelf  with  the  "  Magnalia  "  of  his  book- 
suffocated  son.  Cunningham's  comparatively  recent 
edition,  we  should  think,  might  satisfy  for  a  long  time 
to  come  the  demand  for  Drummond,  whose  chief  value 
to  posterity  is  as  the  Boswell  of  Ben  Jonson.  Sir 
Thomas  Overbury's  "  Characters  "  are  interesting  illus 
trations  of  contemporary  manners,  and  a  mine  of  foot 
notes  to  the  works  of  better  men,  —  but,  with  the  ex 
ception  of  "  The  Fair  and  Happy  Milkmaid,"  they  are 
dull  enough  to  have  pleased  James  the  First ;  his 
"  Wife  "  is  a  cento  of  far-fetched  conceits,  —  here  a  tom 
tit,  and  there  a  hen  mistaken  for  a  pheasant,  like  the 
contents  of  a  cockney's  game-bag,  and  his  chief  interest 
for  us  lies  in  his  having  been  mixed  up  with  an  inexpli 
cable  tragedy  and  poisoned  in  the  Tower,  not  without 
suspicion  of  royal  complicity.  The  "Piers  Ploughman  " 
is  a  reprint,  with  very  little  improvement  that  we  can 
discover,  of  Mr.  Wright's  former  edition.  It  would  have 
been  very  well  to  have  republished  the  "  Fair  Virtue," 
and  "Shepherd's  Hunting  "  of  George  Wither,  which 
contain  all  the  true  poetiy  he  ever  wrote ;  but  we  can 
imagine  nothing  more  dreary  than  the  seven  hundred 
pages  of  his  "  Hymns  and  Songs,"  whose  only  use,  that 
we  can  conceive  of,  would  be  as  penal  reading  for  incor 
rigible  poetasters.  If  a  steady  course  of  these  did  not 
bring  them  out  of  their  nonsenses,  nothing  short  of 
hanging  would.  Take  this  as  a  sample,  hit  on  by  open 
ing  at  random  :  — 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  205 

"  Rottenness  my  bones  possest; 
Trembling  fear  possessed  me; 
I  that  troublous  day  might  rest: 
For,  when  his  approaches  be 
Onward  to  the  people  made, 
His  strong  troops  will  them  invade." 

Southwell  is,  if  possible,  worse.  He  paraphrases  Da 
vid,  putting  into  his  mouth  such  punning  conceits  as 
"fears  are  my  feres,"  and  in  his  "Saint  Peter's  Com 
plaint  "  makes  that  rashest  and  shortest-spoken  of  the 
Apostles  drawl  through  thirty  pages  of  maudlin  repent 
ance,  in  which  the  distinctions  between  the  north  and 
northeast  sides  of  a  sentimentality  are  worthy  of  Duns 
Scotus.  It  does  not  follow,  that,  because  a  man  is  hanged 
for  his  faith,  he  is  able  to  write  good  verses.  We  would 
almost  match  the  fortitude  that  quails  not  at  the  good 
Jesuit's  poems  with  his  own  which  carried  him  serenely 
to  the  fatal  tree.  The  stuff  of  which  poets  are  made, 
whether  finer  or  not,  is  of  a  very  different  fibre  from  that 
which  is  xised  in  the  tough  fabric  of  martyrs.  It  is 
time  that  an  earnest  protest  should  be  uttered  against 
the  wrong  done  to  the  religious  sentiment  by  the  greater 
part  of  what  is  called  religious  poetry,  and  which  is  com- 
jnonly  a  painful  something  misnamed  by  the  noun  and 
misqualified  by  the  adjective.  To  dilute  David,  and 
make  doggerel  of  that  majestic  prose  of  the  Prophets 
which  has  the  glow  and  wide-orbited  metre  of  constel 
lations,  may  be  a  useful  occupation  to  keep  country-gen 
tlemen  out  of  litigation  or  retired  clergymen  from  polem 
ics  ;  but  to  regard  these  metrical  mechanics  as  sacred 
because  nobody  wishes  to  touch  them,  as  meritorious 
because  no  one  can  be  merry  in  their  company,  —  to 
rank  them  in  the  same  class  with  those  ancient  songs  of 
the  Church,  sweet  with  the  breath  of  saints,  sparkling 
with  the  tears  of  forgiven  penitents,  and  warm  with  the 
fervor  of  martyrs,  —  nay,  to  set  them  up  beside  such 


296  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

poems  as  those  of  Herbert,  composed  in  the  upper 
chambers  of  the  soul  that  open  toward  the  sun's  rising, 
is  to  confound  piety  with  dulness,  and  the  manna  of 
heaven  with  its  sickening  namesake  from  the  apoth 
ecary's  drawer.  The  "  Enchiridion  "  of  Quarles  is  hardly 
worthy  of  the  author  of  the  "  Emblems,"  and  is  by  no 
means  an  unattainable  book  in  other  editions,  —  nor  a 
matter  of  heartbreak,  if  it  were.  Of  the  dramatic  works 
of  Marston  and  Lilly  it  is  enough  to  say  that  they  are 
truly  works  to  the  reader,  but  in  no  sense  dramatic, 
nor,  as  literature,  worth  the  paper  they  blot.  They 
seem  to  have  been  deemed  worthy  of  republication  be 
cause  they  were  the  contemporaries  of  true  poets  ;  and 
if  all  the  Tuppers  of  the  nineteenth  century  will  buy 
their  plays  on  the  same  principle,  the  sale  will  be  a 
remunerative  one.  It  was  worth  while,  perhaps,  to  re 
print  Lovelace,  if  only  to  show  what  dull  verses  may  be 
written  by  a  man  who  has  made  one  lucky  hit.  Of  the 
"Early  English  Poetry,"  nine  tenths  had  better  never 
have  been  printed  at  all,  and  the  other  tenth  reprinted 
by  an  editor  who  had  some  vague  suspicion,  at  least,  of 
what  they  meant.  The  Homer  of  Chapman  is  so  pre 
cious  a  gift,  that  we  are  ready  to  forgive  all  Mr.  Smith's 
shortcomings  in  consideration  of  it.  It  is  a  vast  placer, 
full  of  nuggets  for  the  philologist  and  the  lover  of  poetry. 
Having  now  run  cursorily  through  the  series  of  Mr. 
Smith's  reprints,  we  come  to  the  closer  question  of 
How  are  they  edited  ?  Whatever  the  merit  of  the  original 
works,  the  editors,  whether  self-elected  or  chosen  by  the 
publisher,  should  be  accurate  and  scholarly.  The  edit 
ing  of  the  Homer  we  can  heartily  commend ;  and  Dr. 
Rirnbault,  who  carried  the  works  of  Overbury  through 
the  press,  has  done  his  work  well ;  but  the  other  vol 
umes  of  the  Library  are  very  creditable  neither  to  Eng 
lish  scholarship  nor  to  English  typography.  The  Intro- 


LIBRARY   OF    OLD   AUTHORS.  297 

ductions  to  some  of  them  are  enough  to  make  us  think 
that  we  are  fallen  to  the  necessity  of  reprinting  our  old 
authors  because  the  art  of  writing  correct  and  graceful 
English  has  been  lost.  William  B.  Turnbull,  Esq.,  of 
Lincoln's  Inn,  Barrister  at  Law,  says,  for  instance,  in  his 
Introduction  to  Southwell  :  "  There  was  resident  at 
Uxendon,  near  Harrow  on  the  Hill,  in  Middlesex,  a 
Catholic  family  of  the  name  of  Bellamy  whom  [which] 
Southwell  was  in  the  habit  of  visiting  and  providing 
with  religious  instruction  when  he  exchanged  his  ordi 
nary  [ordinarily]  close  confinement  for  a  purer  atmos 
phere."  (p.  xxii.)  Again,  (p.  xxii,)  "  He  had,  in  this 
manner,  for  six  years,  pursued,  with  very  great  success, 
the  objects  of  his  mission,  when  these  were  abruptly 
terminated  by  his  foul  betrayal  into  the  hands  of  his 
enemies  in  1592."  We  should  like  to  have  Mr.  Turn- 
bull  explain  how  the  objects  of  a  mission  could  be  termi 
nated  by  a  betrayal,  however  it  might  be  with  the  mis 
sion  itself.  From  the  many  similar  flowers  in  the  In 
troduction  to  Mather's  "  Providences,"  by  Mr.  George 
Off  or,  (in  whom,  we  fear,  we  recognize  a  countryman,) 
we  select  the  following  :  "  It  was  at  this  period  when, 
[that,]  oppressed  by  the  ruthless  hand  of  persecu 
tion,  our  Pilgrim  Fathers,  threatened  with  torture  and 
death,  succumbed  not  to  man,  but  trusting  on  [in]  an 
almighty  arm,  braved  the  dangers  of  an  almost  un 
known  ocean,  and  threw  themselves  into  the  arms  of 
men  called  savages,  who  proved  more  beneficent  than 
national  Christians."  To  whom  or  what  our  Pilgrim 
Fathers  did  succumb,  and  what  "national  Christians" 
are,  we  leave,  with  the  song  of  the  Sirens,  to  conjecture. 
Speaking  of  the  "Providences,"  Mr.  Offor  says,  that 
"they  faithfully  delineate  the  state  of  public  opinion 
two  hundred  years  ago,  the  most  striking  feature  being 
an  implicit  faith  in  the  power  of  the  [in-]visible  world  to 
13* 


298  LIBBARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

hold  visible  intercourse  with  man  :  —  not  the  angels  to 
bless  poor  erring  mortals,  but  of  demons  imparting 
power  to  witches  and  warlocks  to  injure,  terrify  and  de 
stroy,"  —  a  sentence  which  we  defy  any  witch  or  war 
lock,  though  he  were  Michael  Scott  himself,  to  parse 
with  the  astutest  demonic  aid.  On  another  page,  he 
says  of  Dr.  Mather,  that  "  he  was  one  of  the  first  divines 
who  discovered  that  very  many  strange  events,  which 
were  considered  preternatural,  had  occurred  in  the 
course  of  nature  or  by  deceitful  juggling ;  that  the 
Devil  could  not  speak  English,  nor  prevail  with  Protes 
tants  ;  the  smell  of  herbs  alarms  the  Devil ;  that  medi 
cine  drives  out  Satan  ! "  We  do  not  wonder  that  Mr. 
Offor  put  a  mark  of  exclamation  at  the  end  of  this  sur 
prising  sentence,  but  we  do  confess  our  astonishment 
that  the  vermilion  pencil  of  the  proof-reader  suffered  it 
to  pass  unchallenged.  Leaving  its  bad  English  out  of 
the  question,  we  find,  on  referring  to  Mather's  text,  that 
he  was  never  guilty  of  the  absurdity  of  believing  that 
Satan  was  less  eloquent  in  English  than  in  any  other 
language ;  that  it  was  the  British  (Welsh)  tongue  which 
a  certain  demon  whose  education  had  been  neglected 
(not  tlie  Devil)  could  not  speak ;  that  Mather  is  not  fool 
enough  to  say  that  the  Fiend  cannot  prevail  with  Prot 
estants,  nor  that  the  smell  of  herbs  alarms  him,  nor 
that  medicine  drives  him  out.  Anything  more  help 
lessly  inadequate  than  Mr.  Offor's  preliminary  disser 
tation  on  Witchcraft  we  never  read ;  but  we  could 
hardly  expect  much  from  an  editor  whose  citations  from 
the  book  he  is  editing  show  that  he  had  either  not  read 
or  not  understood  it. 

Mr.  Offor  is  superbly  Protestant  and  iconoclastic,  — 
not  sparing,  as  we  have  seen,  even  Priscian's  head 
among  the  rest ;  but,  en  revanche,  Mr.  Turnbull  is  ultra 
montane  beyond  the  editors  of  the  Civiltcl  Cattolica. 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS.  299 

He  allows  himself  to  say,  that,  "  after  Southwell's  death, 
one  of  his  sisters,  a  Catholic  in  heart,  but  timidly  and 
blamably  simulating  heresy,  wrought,  with  some  relics 
of  the  martyr,  several  cures  on  persons  afflicted  with 
desperate  and  deadly  diseases,  which  had  baffled  the 
skill  of  all  physicians."  Mr.  Turnbull  is,  we  suspect,  a 
recent  convert,  or  it  would  occur  to  him  that  doctors 
are  still  secure  of  a  lucrative  practice  in  countries  full 
of  the  relics  of  greater  saints  than  even  Southwell. 
That  father  was  hanged  (according  to  Protestants)  for 
treason,  and  the  relic  which  put  the  whole  pharmaco- 
poaia  to  shame  was,  if  we  mistake  not,  his  neckerchief. 
But  whatever  the  merits  of  the  Jesuit  himself,  and  how 
ever  it  may  gratify  Mr.  Turnbull's  catechumenical  en 
thusiasm  to  exalt  the  curative  properties  of  this  integu 
ment  of  his,  even  at  the  expense  of  Jesuits'  bark,  we 
cannot  but  think  that  he  has  shown  a  credulity  that 
unfits  him  for  writing  a  fair  narrative  of  his  hero's  life, 
or  making  a  tolerably  just  estimate  of  his  verses.  It  is 
possible,  however,  that  these  last  seem  prosaic  as  a 
necktie  only  to  heretical  readers. 

We  have  singled  out  the  Introductions  of  Messrs. 
Turnbull  and  Offor  for  special  animadversion  because 
they  are  on  the  whole  the  worst,  both  of  them  being 
offensively  sectarian,  while  that  of  Mr.  Offor  in  particular 
gives  us  almost  no  information  whatever.  Some  of  the 
others  are  not  without  grave  faults,  chief  among  which- 
is  a  vague  declamation,  especially  out  of  place  in  criti 
cal  essays,  where  it  serves  only  to  weary  the  reader  and 
awaken  his  distrust.  In  his  Introduction  to  Wither's 
"  Hallelujah,"  for  instance,  Mr.  Farr  informs  us  that 
"  nearly  all  the  best  poets  of  the  latter  half  of  the  six 
teenth  century  —  for  that  was  the  period  when  the 
Reformation  was  fully  established  —  and  the  whole  of  the 
seventeenth  century  were  sacred  poets,"  and  that  "  even 


300  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

Shakespeare  and  the  contemporary  dramatists  of  his 
age  sometimes  attuned  their  well-strung  harps  to  the 
songs  of  Ziou."  Comment  on  statements  like  these 
would  be  as  useless  as  the  assertions  themselves  are 
absurd. 

We  have  quoted  these  examples  only  to  justify  us  iu 
saying  that  Mr.  Smith  must  select  his  editors  with 
more  care  if  he  wishes  that  his  "  Library  of  Old 
Authors  "  should  deserve  the  confidence  and  thereby  gain 
the  good  word  of  intelligent  readers,  —  without  which 
such  a  series  can  neither  win  nor  keep  the  patronage  of 
the  public.  It  is  impossible  that  men  who  cannot  con 
struct  an  English  sentence  correctly,  and  who  do  not 
know  the  value  of  clearness  in  writing,  should  be  able 
to  disentangle  the  knots  which  slovenly  printers  have 
tied  in  the  thread  of  an  old  author's  meaning  ;  and  it  is 
more  than  doubtful  whether  they  who  assert  carelessly, 
cite  inaccurately,  and  write  loosely  are  not  by  nature 
disqualified  for  doing  thoroughly  what  they  undertake 
to  do.  If  it  were  unreasonable  to  demand  of  every  one 
who  assumes  to  edit  one  of  our  early  poets  the  critical 
acumen,  the  genial  sense,  the  illimitable  reading,  the 
philological  scholarship,  which  in  combination  would 
alone  make  the  ideal  editor,  it  is  not  presumptuous  to 
expect  some  one  of  these  qualifications  singly,  and  we 
have  the  right  to  insist  upon  patience  and  accuracy, 
which  are  within  the  reach  of  every  one,  and  without 
which  all  the  others  are  wellnigh  vain.  Now  to  this 
virtue  of  accuracy  Mr.  Offor  specifically  lays  claim  in 
one  of  his  remarkable  sentences  :  "  We  are  bound  to  ad 
mire,"  he  says,  "  the  accuracy  and  beauty  of  this  speci 
men  of  typography.  Following  in  the  path  of  my  late 
friend  William  Pickering,  our  publisher  rivals  the 
Aldine  and  Elzevir  presses,  which  have  been  so  univer 
sally  admired."  We  should  think  that  it  was  the  pro- 


LIBRAKY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  301 

duct  of  those  presses  which  had  been  admired,  and  that 
Mr.  Smith  presents  a  still  worthier  object  of  admiration 
when  he  contrives  to  follow  a  path  and  rival  a  press  at 
the  same  time.  But  let  that  pass ;  —  it  is  the  claim  to 
accuracy  which  we  dispute  ;  and  \ve  deliberately  affirm, 
that,  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  judge  by  the  volumes  we 
have  examined,  no  claim  more  xinfounded  was  ever  set 
up.  In  some  cases,  as  we  shall  show  presently,  the 
blunders  of  the  original  work  have  been  followed  with 
painful  accuracy  in  the  reprint ;  but  many  others  have 
been  added  by  the  carelessness  of  Mr.  Smith's  printers 
or  editors.  In  the  thirteen  pages  of  Mr.  Offor's  own  In 
troduction  we  have  found  as  many  as  seven  typographi 
cal  errors,  —  unless  some  of  them  are  to  be  excused  on 
the  ground  that  Mr.  Offor's  studies  have  not  yet  led  him 
into  those  arcana  where  we  are  taught  such  recondite  mys 
teries  of  language  as  that  verbs  agree  with  their  nomi 
natives.  In  Mr.  Farr's  Introduction  to  the  "  Hymns 
and  Songs 'r  nine  short  extracts  from  other  poems  of 
AVither  are  quoted,  and  in  these  we  have  found  no  less 
than  seven  misprints  or  false  readings  which  materially 
affect  the  sense.  Textual  inaccuracy  is  a  grave  fault  in 
the  new  edition  of  an  old  poet;  and  Mr.  Farr  is  not 
only  liable  to  this  charge,  but  also  to  that  of  making 
blundering  misstatements  which  are  calculated  to  mis 
lead  the  careless  or  uncritical  reader.  Infected  by  the 
absurd  cant  which  has  been  prevalent  for  the  last  dozen 
years  among  literary  sciolists,  he  says,  —  "  The  language 
used  by  AVither  in  all  his  various  works  —  whether 
secular  or  sacred  —  is  pure  Saxon."  Taken  literally, 
this  assertion  is  manifestly  ridiculous,  and,  allowing  it 
every  possible  limitation,  it  is  not  only  untrue  of  AVith 
er,  but  of  every  English  poet,  from  Chaucer  down.  The 
translators  of  our  Bible  made  use  of  the  German  version, 
and  a  poet  versifying  the  English  Scriptures  would 


302  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

therefore  be  likely  to  use  more  words  of  Teutonic  origin 
than  in  his  original  compositions.  But  no  English  poet 
can  write  English  poetry  except  in  English,  —  that  is,  in 
that  compound  of  Teutonic  and  Romanic  which  derives 
its  heartiness  and  strength  from  the  one  and  its  canor 
ous  elegance  from  the  other.  The  Saxon  language  does 
not  sing,  and,  though  its  tough  mortar  serve  to  hold  to 
gether  the  less  compact  Latin  words,  porous  with  vowels, 
it  is  to  the  Latin  that  our  verse  owes  majesty,  harmony, 
variety,  and  the  capacity  for  rhyme.  A  quotation  of  six 
lines  from  Wither  ends  at  the  top  of  the  very  page  on 
which  Mr.  Farr  lays  down  his  extraordinary  dictum,  and 
we  will  let  this  answer  him,  Italicizing  the  words  of 
Romance  derivation  :  — 

"  Her  true  beauty  leaves  behind 
Apprehensions  in  the  mind, 
Of  more  sweetness  than  all  art 
Or  inventions  can  impart ; 
Thoughts  too  deep  to  be  expressed, 
And  too  strong  to  be  suppressed." 

Mr.  Halliwell,  at  the  close  of  his  Preface  to  the  Works 
of  Marston,  (Vol.  I.  p.  xxii,)  says,  "  The  dramas  now 
collected  together  are  reprinted  absolutely  from  the 
early  editions,  which  were  placed  in  the  hands  of  our 
printers,  who  thus  had  the  advantage  of  following  them 
without  the  intervention  of  a  transcriber.  They  are 
given  as  nearly  as  possible  in  their  original  state,  the 
only  modernizations  attempted  consisting  in  the  alterna 
tions  of  the  letters  i  and  /,  and  u  and  v,  the  retention  of 
which  "  (does  Mr.  Halliwell  mean  the  letters  or  the  "  al 
ternations  '"?)  "  would  have  answered  no  useful  purpose, 
while  it  would  have  unnecessarily  perplexed  the  modern 
reader." 

This  is  not  very  clear  ;  but  as  Mr.  Halliwell  is  a  mem 
ber  of  several  learned  foreign  societies,  and  especially  of 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS.  303 

the  Royal  Irish  Academy,  perhaps  it  would  be  unfair  to 
demand  that  he  should  write  clear  English.  As  one  of 
Mr.  Smith's  editors,  it  was  to  be  expected  that  he  should 
not  write  it  idiomatically.  Some  malign  constellation 
(Taurus,  perhaps,  whose  infaust  aspect  may  be  supposed 
to  preside  over  the  makers  of  bulls  and  blunders-)  seems 
to  have  been  in  conjunction  with  heavy  Saturn  when  the 
Library  was  projected.  At  the  top  of  the  same  page 
from  which  we  have  made  our  quotation,  Mr.  Halliwell 
speaks  of  "  conveying  a  favorable  impression  on  modern 
readers."  It  was  surely  to  no  such  phrase  as  this  that 
Ensign  Pistol  alluded  when  he  said,  "  Convey  the  wise  it 
call." 

A  literal  reprint  of  an  old  author  may  be  of  value  in 
two  ways  :  the  orthography  may  in  certain  cases  indicate 
the  ancient  pronunciation,  or  it  may  put  us  on  a  scent 
which  shall  lead  us  to  the  burrow  of  a  word  among  the 
roots  of  language.  But  in  order  to  this,  it  surely  is  not 
needful  to  undertake  the  reproduction  of  all  the  original 
errors  of  the  press ;  and  even  were  it  so,  the  proofs  of 
carelessness  in  the  editorial  department  are  so  glaring, 
that  we  are  left  in  doubt,  after  all,  if  we  may  congratu 
late  ourselves  on  possessing  all  these  sacred  blunders  of 
the  Elizabethan  type-setters  in  their  integrity,  and  with 
out  any  debasement  of  modern  alloy.  If  it  be  gratifying 
to  know  that  there  lived  stupid  men  before  our  contem 
porary  Agamemnons  in  that  kind,  yet  we  demand  abso 
lute  accuracy  in  the  report  of  the  phenomena  in  order  to 
arrive  at  anything  like  safe  statistics.  For  instance,  we 
find  (Vol.  I.  p.  89)  "  ACTUS  SECUNDUS,  SCENA  PRIMUS," 
and  (Vol.  III.  p.  174)  "  exit  am6o,"and  we  are  interested 
to  know  that  in  a  London  printing-house,  two  centuries 
and  a  half  ago,  there  was  a  philanthropist  who  wished 
to  simplify  the  study  of  the  Latin  language  by  reducing 
all  the  nouns  to  one  gender  and  all  the  verbs  to  one 


304  LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS. 

number.  Had  his  emancipated  theories  of  grammar  pre 
vailed,  how  much  easier  would  that  part  of  boys  which 
cherubs  want  have  found  the  school-room  benches ! 
How  would  birchen  bark,  as  an  educational  tonic,  have 
fallen  in  repute  !  How  white  would  have  been  the  (now 
black-and-blue)  memories  of  Dr.  Busby  and  so  many 
other  educational  lictors,  who,  with  their  bundles  of  rods, 
heralded  not  alone  the  consuls,  but  all  other  Roman  an 
tiquities  to  us !  We  dare  not,  however,  indulge  in  the 
grateful  vision,  since  there  are  circumstances  which  lead 
us  to  infer  that  Mr.  Halliwell  himself  (member  though 
he  be  of  so  many  learned  societies)  has  those  vague  no 
tions  of  the  speech  of  ancient  Rome  which  are  apt  to 
prevail  in  regions  which  count  not  the  betula  in  their 
Flora.  On  page  xv  of  his  Preface,  he  makes  Drummond 
say  that  Ben  Jonson  "  was  dilated  "  (delated,  —  Gilford 
gives  it  in  English,  accused)  "  to  the  king  by  Sir  James 
Murray,"  —  Ben,  whose  corpulent  person  stood  in  so 
little  need  of  that  malicious  increment ! 

What  is  Mr.  Halliwell's  conception  of  editorial  duty  ? 
As  we  read  along,  and  the  once  fair  complexion  of  the 
margin  grew  more  and  more  pitted  with  pencil-marks, 
like  that  of  a  bad  proof-sheet,  we  began  to  think  that  he 
was  acting  on  the  principle  of  every  man  his  own  wash 
erwoman,  —  that  he  was  making  blunders  of  set  purpose, 
(as  teachers  of  languages  do  in  their  exercises,)  in  order 
that  we  might  correct  them  for  ourselves,  and  so  fit  us 
in  time  to  be  editors  also,  and  members  of  various  learned 
societies,  even  as  Mr.  Halliwell  himself  is.  We  fancied, 
that,  magnanimously  waving  aside  the  laurel  with  which 
a  grateful  posterity  crowned  General  Wade,  he  wished 
us  "  to  see  these  roads  before  they  were  made,"  and  de 
velop  our  intellectual  muscles  in  getting  over  them. 
But  no  ;  Mr.  Halliwell  has  appended  notes  to  his  edi 
tion,  and  among  them  are  some  which  correct  misprints, 


LIBEAEY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  305 

and  therefore  seem  to  imply  that  he  considers  that  service 
as  belonging  properly  to  the  editorial  function.  We  are 
obliged,  then,  to  give  up  our  theory  that  his  intention 
was  to  make  every  reader  an  editor,  and  to  suppose  that 
he  wished  rather  to  show  how  disgracefully  a  book  might 
be  edited  and  yet  receive  the  commendation  of  profes 
sional  critics  who  read  with  the  ends  of  their  fingers.  If 
this  were  his  intention,  Marston  himself  never  published 
so  biting  a  satire. 

Let  us  look  at  a  few  of  the  intricate  passages,  to  help 
us  through  which  Mr.  Halliwell  lends  us  the  light  of  his 
editorial  lantern.  In  the  Induction  to  "  What  you  Will  " 
occurs  the  striking  and  unusual  phrase,  "  Now  out  up- 
pont,"  and  Mr.  Halliwell  favors  us  with  the  following 
note  :  "  Page  221,  line  10.  Up-pont.  —  That  is,  upon  V 
Again  in  the  same  play  we  find  — 

"  Let  twattling  fame  cheatd  others  rest, 
I  um  no  dish  for  rumors  feast." 

Of  course,  it  should  read,  — 

"  Let  twattling  [twaddling]  Fame  cheate  others'  rest, 
I  am  no  dish  for  Rumor's  feast." 

Mr.  Halliwell  comes  to  our  assistance  thus  :  "  Page  244, 
line  21,  [22  it  should  be,]/  um, — a  printer's  error  for 
/  am."  Dignus  vindice  nodiis  !  Five  lines  above,  we 
have  "whole"  for  "who  '11,"  and  four  lines  below,  "  helm- 
eth  "  for  "  whelmeth  "  ;  but  Mr.  Halliwell  vouchsafes  no 
note.  In  the  "  Fawn  "  we  read,  "  Wise  neads  use  few 
words,"  and  the  editor  says  in  a  note,  "a  misprint  for 
heads  "  !  Kind  Mr.  Halliwell  ! 

Having  given  a  few  examples  of  our  "  Editor's  "  cor 
rections,  we  proceed  to  quote  a  passage  or  two  which,  it 
is  to  be  presumed,  he  thought  perfectly  clear. 

"  A  man  can  skarce  put  on  a  tuckt-up  cap, 
A  button'd  frizado  snte,  gkarce  eate  good  meate, 
Anchoves,  caviare,  but  hee's  satyred 

T 


306  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

And  tcrni'd  phantasticall.     By  the  muddy  spawne 

Of  slymie  neughtes,  when  troth,  phantastickuesse 

That  which  the  naturall  sophysters  tearme 

Phuntusia  incompltxa  —  is  a  function 

Even  of  the  bright  immortal  part  of  man. 

It  is  the  common  passe,  the  sacred  dore, 

Unto  the  prive  chamber  of  the  soule ; 

That  bar'd,  nought  passetb.  past  the  baser  court 

Of  outward  scence  by  it  th'  inamorate 

Most  lively  thinkes  he  sees  the  absent  beauties 

Of  his  lov'd  mistres."    (Vol.  I.  p.  241.) 

In  this  case,  also,  the  true  readings  are  clear  enough  :  — 

"  And  termed  fantastical  by  the  muddy  spawn 

Of  slimy  newts  "; 
and 

"  . .  .  .  past  the  baser  court 
Of  outward  sense  " ;  — 

but,  if  anything  was  to  be  explained,  why  are  we  here 
deserted  by  our  fida  compagna  ?  Again,  (Vol.  II.  pp. 
55,  56,)  we  read,  "  This  Granuffo  is  a  right  wise  good 
lord,  a  man  of  excellent  discourse,  and  never  speakes  his 
signes  to  me,  and  men  of  profound  reach  instruct  aboun- 
dantly ;  hee  begges  suites  with  signes,  gives  thanks  with 
signes,"  etc.  This  Granuffo  is  qualified  among  the  "  In 
terlocutors  "  as  "  a  silent  lord,"  and  what  fun  there  is  in 
the  character  (which,  it  must  be  confessed,  is  rather  of  a 
lenten  kind)  consists  in  his  genius  for  saying  nothing. 
It  is  plain  enough  that  the  passage  should  read,  "a 
man  of  excellent  discourse,  and  never  speaks ;  his 
signs  to  me  and  men  of  profound  reach  instruct  abun 
dantly,"  etc. 

In  both  the  passages  we  have  quoted,  it  is  not  difficult 
for  the  reader  to  set  the  text  right.  Exit  if  not  difficult 
for  the  reader,  it  should  certainly  not  have  been  so  for 
the  editor,  who  should  have  done  what  Broome  was  said 
to  have  done  for  Pope  in  his  Homer,  —  "  gone  before 
and  swept  the  way."  An  edition  of  an  English  author 
ought  to  be  intelligible  to  English  readers,  and,  if  the 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  307 

editor  do  not  make  it  so,  he  wrongs  the  old  poet,  for  two 
centuries  lapt  in  lead,  to  whose  works  he  undertakes  to 
play  the  gentleman-usher.  A  play  written  in  our  own 
tongue  should  not  be  as  tough  to  us  as  ^Eschylus  to 
a  ten  years'  graduate,  nor  do  we  wish  to  be  reduced  to 
the  level  of  a  chimpanzee,  and  forced  to  gnaw  our  way 
through  a  thick  shell  of  misprints  and  mispointings  only 
to  find  (as  is  generally  the  case  with  Marston)  a  rancid 
kernel  of  meaning  after  all.  But  even  Marston  some 
times  deviates  into  poetry,  as  a  man  who  wrote  in  that 
age  could  hardly  help  doing,  and  one  of  the  few  instances 
of  it  is  in  a  speech  of  Erichtho,  in  the  first  scene  of  the 
fourth  act  of  "  Sophonisba,"  (Vol.  I.  p.  197,)  which  Mr. 
Halliwell  presents  to  us  in  this  shape  :  — 


-"  hardby  the  reverent  ( ! )  mines 


Of  a  once  glorious  temple  rear'd  to  Jove 
Whose  very  rubbish 

yet  beares 

A  deathlesse  majesty,  thougli  now  quite  rac'd,  [razed,] 
Hurl'd  down  by  wrath  and  lust  of  impious  kings, 
So  that  where  holy  Flamins  [Flamens]  wont  to  sing 
Sweet  hymnes  to  Heaven,  there  the  daw  and  crow, 
The  ill-voyc'd  raven,  and  still  chattering  pye, 
Send  out  ungratefull  sounds  and  loathsome  filth; 
Where  statues  and  Joves  acts  were  vively  limbs, 

Where  tombs  and  beautious  urnes  of  well  dead  men 
Stood  in  assured  rest,"  etc. 

The  last  verse  and  a  half  are  worthy  of  Chapman ;  but 
why  did  not  Mr.  Halliwell,  who  explains  up-pont  and  / 
-urn,  change  "Joves  acts  were  vively  limbs "  to  '(Jove's 
acts  were  lively  limned,"  which  was  unquestionably  what 
Marston  wrote  ] 

In  the  "  Scourge  of  Villanie,"  (Vol.  III.  p.  252,)  there 
is  a  passage  which  till  lately  had  a  modern  application  in 
America,  though  happily  archaic  in  England,  which  Mr. 
Halliwell  suffers  to  stand  thus  :  — 


308  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

"Once  Albion  lived  in  such  a  cruel  age 
Than  man  did  hold  by  servile  vilenage : 
Poore  brats  were  slaves  of  bondmen  that  were  borne, 
And  marled,  sold :  but  that  rude  law  is  torne 
And  disannuld,  as  too  too  inhumane." 

This  should  read  — 

"  Man  man  did  hold  in  servile  villanage ; 

Poor  brats  were  slaves  (of  bondmen  that  were  born) " ; 
and  perhaps  some  American  poet  will  one  day  write  in 
the  past  tense  similar  verses  of  the  barbarity  of  his  fore 
fathers. 

We  will  give  one  more  scrap  of  Mr.  Halli well's  text : — 

"  Yfaith,  why  then,  caprichious  mirth, 
Skip,  light  moriscoes,  in  our  froliek  blond, 
Flagg'd  veines,  sweete,  plump  with  fresh-infused  joyes ! " 

which  Marston,  doubtless,  wrote  thus  :  — 

"  I'faith,  why  then,  capricious  Mirth, 
Skip  light  moriscoes  in  our  frolic  blood! 
Flagg'd  veins,  swell  plump  with  fresh-infused  joys !  " 

We  have  quoted  only  a  few  examples  from  among  the 
scores  that  we  had  marked,  and  against  such  a  style  of 
"  editing  "  we  invoke  the  shade  of  Marston  himself.  In 
the  Preface  to  the  Second  Edition  of  the  "  Fawn,"  he 
says,  "  Eeader,  know  I  have  perused  this  coppy,  to  make 
some  satis  faction  for  the  first  faulty  impression  ;  yet  so  ur 
gent  hath  been  my  business  that  some  errors  have  styll  passed, 
which  thy  discretion  may  amend" 

Literally,  to  be  sure,  Mr.  Halliwcll  has  availed  him 
self  of  the  permission  of  the  poet,  in  leaving  all  emen 
dation  to  the  reader ;  but  certainly  he  has  been  false  to 
the  spirit  of  it  in  his  self-assumed  office  of  editor.  The 
notes  to  explain  up-pont  and  /  um  give  us  a  kind  of 
standard  of  the  highest  intelligence  which  Mr.  Halliwell 
dares  to  take  for  granted  in  the  ordinary  reader.  Sup 
posing  this  nousometer  of  his  to  be  a  centigrade,  in  what 
hitherto  unconceived  depths  of  cold  obstruction  can  he 
find  his  zero-point  of  entire  idiocy  1  The  expansive  force 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  309 

of  average  wits  cannot  be  reckoned  upon,  as  we  see,  to 
drive  them  up  as  far  as  the  temperate  degree  of  mis 
prints  in  one  syllable,  and  those,  too,  in  their  native 
tongue.  A  fortiori,  then,  Mr.  Halliwell  is  bound  to  lend 
us  the  aid  of  his  great  learning  wherever  his  author  has 
introduced  foreign  words  and  the  old  printers  have 
made  pie  of  them.  In  a  single  case  he  has  accepted  his 
responsibility  as  dragoman,  and  the  amount  of  his  suc 
cess  is  not  such  as  to  give  us  any  poignant  regret  that 
he  has  everywhere  else  left  us  to  our  own  devices.  On 
p.  119,  Vol.  II.,  Francischina,  a  Dutchwoman,  exclaims, 
"  0,  mine  aderliver  love."  Here  is  Mr.  Halliwell's  note. 
"  Aderliver.  —  This  is  the  speaker's  error  for  alder-liever, 
the  best  beloved  by  all."  Certainly  not  "the  speaker's 
error,"  for  Marston  was  no  such  fool  as  intentionally  to 
make  a  Dutchwoman  blunder  in  her  own  language.  But 
is  it  an  error  for  alderliever  ?  No,  but  for  alderliefster. 
Mr.  Halliwell  might  have  found  it  in  many  an  old  Dutch 
song.  For  example,  No.  96  of  Hoffmann  von  Fallersle- 
ben's  "  Niederlandische  Volkslieder"  begins  thus  :  — 

"Mijn  hert  altijt  heeft  verlanghen 
Naer  u,  die  alderliefsle  mijn." 

But  does  the  word  mean  "best  beloved  by  all'"?  No 
such  thing,  of  course;  but  "best  beloved  of  all,"  — 
that  is,  by  the  speaker. 

In  "Antonio  and  Mellida"  (Vol.  I.  pp.  50,  51)  occur 
some  Italian  verses,  and  here  we  hoped  to  fare  better ; 
for  Mr.  Halliwell  (as  we  learn  from  the  title-page  of  his 
Dictionary)  is  a  member  of  the  "  Reale  Academia  di 
Firenze?  This  is  the  Accademia  della  Crusca,  founded  for 
the  conservation  of  the  Italian  language  in  its  purity,  and 
it  is  rather  a  fatal  symptom  that  Mr.  Halliwell  should  in 
dulge  in  the  heresy  of  spelling  Accademia  with  only  one  c. 
But  let  us  see  what  our  Della  Cruscan's  notions  of  con 
serving  are.  Here  is  a  specimen  :  — 


310  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

"  Bassiammi,  cogHer  1'  aura  odorata 
Che  in  sua  neggia  in  quello  dolce  labra. 
Dammi  pimpero  del  tuo  gradit'  amore." 

It  is  clear  enough  that  we  ought  to  read, 
"  Lasciami  coglier,  ....  Che  ha  sua  seggia, ....  Dammi  1'  impero." 

A  Delia  Cruscan  academician  might  at  least  have  cor 
rected  by  his  dictionary  the  spelling  and  number  of 
labra. 

We  think  that  we  have  sustained  our  indictment  of 
Mr.  Halliwell's  text  with  ample  proof.  The  title  of  the 
book  should  have  been,  "  The  Works  of  John  Marston, 
containing  all*  the  Misprints  of  the  Original  Copies, 
together  with  a  few  added  for  the  First  Time  in  this 
Edition,  the  whole  carefully  let  alone  by  James  Orchard 
Halliwell,  F.  R.  S.,  F.  S.  A."  It  occurs  to  us  that  Mr. 
Halliwell  may  be  also  a  Fellow  of  the  Geological  Society, 
and  may  have  caught  from  its  members  the  enthusiasm 
which  leads  him  to  attach  so  extraordinary  a  value  to 
every  goose-track  of  the  Elizabethan  formation.  It  is 
bad  enough  to  be,  as  Marston  was,  one  of  those  middling 
poets  whom  neither  gods  nor  men  nor  columns  (Horace 
had  never  seen  a  newspaper)  tolerate  ;  but,  really,  even 
they  do  not  deserve  the  frightful  retribution  of  being 
reprinted  by  a  Halliwell. 

We  have  said  that  we  could  not  feel  even  the  dubious 
satisfaction  of  knowing  that  the  blunders  of  the  old  cop 
ies  had  been  faithfully  followed  in  the  reprinting.  We 
see  reason  for  doubting  whether  Mr.  Halliwell  ever  read 
the  proof-sheets.  In  his  own  notes  we  have  found  sev 
eral  mistakes.  For  instance,  he  refers  to  p.  159  when  he 
means  p.  153 ;  he  cites  "  I,  but  her  life"  instead  of 
"  lip  "  ;  and  he  makes  Spenser  speak  of  "  old  Pithonus." 
Marston  is  not  an  author  of  enough  importance  to  make 
it  desirable  that  we  should  be  put  in  possession  of  all 
the  corrupted  readings  of  his  text,  were  such  a  thing 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS.  311 

possible  even  with  the  most  minute  painstaking,  and  Mr. 
Halliwell's  edition  loses  its  only  claim  to  value  the  mo 
ment  a  doubt  is  cast  upon  the  accuracy  of  its  inaccuracies. 
It  is  a  matter  of  special  import  to  us  (whose  means 
of  access  to  originals  are  exceedingly  limited)  that  the 
English  editors  of  our  old  authors  should  be  faithful  and 
trustworthy,  and  we  have  singled  out  Mr.  Halliwell's 
Marston  for  particular  animadversion  only  because  we 
think  it  on  the  whole  the  worst  edition  we  ever  saw  of 
any  author. 

Having  exposed  the  condition  in  which  our  editor  has 
left  the  text,  we  proceed  to  test  his  competency  in  an 
other  respect,  by  examining  some  of  the  emendations 
and  explanations  of  doubtful  passages  which  he  proposes. 
These  are  very  few  ;  but  had  they  been  even  fewer,  they 
had  been  too  many. 

Among  the  dramatis personce  of  the  "Fawn,"  as  we 
said  before,  occurs  "  Granuffo,  a  silent  lord."  He  speaks 
only  once  during  the  play,  and  that  in  the  last  scene. 
In  Act  I.  Scene  2,  Gonzago  says,  speaking  to  Granuffo,  — 

"  Now,  sure,  them  art  a  man 
Of  a  most  learned  scilence,  and  one  whose  words 
Have  bin  most  pretious  to  me." 

This  seems  quite  plain,  but  Mr.  Halliwell  annotates 
thus:  "  Scilence.  — Query,  science  ?  The  common  read 
ing,  silence,  may,  however,  be  what  is  intended."  That 
the  spelling  should  have  troubled  Mr.  Halliwell  is  re 
markable ;  for  elsewhere  we  find  "god-boy  "for  "good 
bye,"  "seace"  for  "cease,"  "bodies"  for  "boddice," 
"  pollice  "  for  "  policy,"  "  pitittying "  for  "  pitying," 
"scence"  for  "sense,"  "Misenzius"  for  "  Mezentius," 
"  Ferazes  "  for  "  Ferrarese,"  —  and  plenty  beside,  equal 
ly  odd.  That  he  should  have  doubted  the  meaning  is 
no  less  strange  ;  for  on  p.  41  of  the  same  play  we  read, 
"  My  Lord  Granuffo,  you  may  likewise  stay,  for  I  know 


312  LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS. 

you'l  say  nothing" — on  pp.  55,  56,  "  This  Granuffo  is 
a  right  wise  good  lord,  a  man  of  excellent  discourse  and 
never  speaks"  —  and  on  p.  94,  we  find  the  following  dia 
logue  :  — 

"  Gon.  My  Lord  Granuffo,  this  Fawne  is  an  excellent  fellow. 

"  Don.  Silence. 

"  Gon.  I  warrant  you  for  my  loi-d  here. 

In  the  same  play  (p.  44)  are  these  lines  :  — 

"  I  apt  for  love  V 
Let  lazy  idlenes  fild  full  of  wine 
Heated  with  meates,  high  fedde  with  lustfull  ease 
Goe  dote  on  culler  [color].    As  forme,  why,  death  a  sence, 
I  court  the  ladie  ?  " 

This  is  Mr.  Halliwell's  note  :  "  Death  a  sence.  —  '  Earth 
a  sense,'  ed.  1633.  Mr.  Dilke  suggests  :  'For  me,  why, 
earth's  as  sensible.'  The  original  is  not  necessarily  cor 
rupt.  It  may  mean,  —  why,  you  might  as  well  think 
Death  was  a  sense,  one  of  the  senses.  See  a  like  phrase 
at  p.  77."  What  help  we  should  get  by  thinking  Death 
one  of  the  senses,  it  would  demand  another  (Edipus  to 
unriddle.  Mr.  Halliwell  can  astonish  us  no  longer,  but 
we  are  surprised  at  Mr.  Dilke,  the  very  competent 
editor  of  the  "  Old  English  Plays,"  1815.  From  him  we 
might  have  hoped  for  better  things.  "  Death  o'  sense  !  " 
is  an  exclamation.  Throughout  these  volumes  we  find  a 
for  o', — as,  "a clock"  for  "o'clock,"  "a  the  side"  for 
"  o'  the  side."  A  similar  exclamation  is  to  be  found  in 
three  other  places  in  the  same  play,  where  the  sense 
is  obvious.  Mr.  Halliwell  refers  to  one  of  them  on 
p.  77,  —  "  Death  a  man  !  is  she  delivered  1 "  The  others 
are,  —  "  Death  a  justice  !  are  we  in  Normandy1?  "  (p.  98) ; 
and  "Death  a  discretion  !  if  I  should  prove  a  foole  now," 
or,  as  given  by  Mr.  Halliwell,  "  Death,  a  discretion  ! " 
Now  let  us  apply  Mr.  Halliwell's  explanation.  "  Death 
a  man  ! "  you  might  as  well  think  Death  was  a  man, 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  313 

that  is,  one  of  the  men !  —  or  a  discretion,  that  is,  one 
of  the  discretions  !  —  or  a  justice,  that  is,  one  of  the 
quorum  !  We  trust  Mr.  Halliwell  may  never  have  the 
editing  of  Bob  Acres's  imprecations.  "  Odd's  triggers  !  " 
he  would  say,  "that  is,  as  odd  as,  or  as  strange  as,  triggers." 
Vol.  III.  p.  77,  "the  vote-killing  mandrake."  Mr. 
Halliwell's  note  is,  "vote-killing.  —  'Voice-killing,'  ed. 
1613.  It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  either  be  the 
correct  reading."  He  then  gives  a  familiar  citation  from 
Browne's  "  Vulgar  Errors."  "  Vote-killing  "  may  be  a  mere 
misprint  for  "  note-killing,"  but  "  voice-killing"  is  certain 
ly  the  better  reading.  Either,  however,  makes  sense.  Al 
though  Sir  Thomas  Browne  does  not  allude  to  the  dead 
ly  property  of  the  mandrake's  shriek,  yet  Mr.  Halliwell, 
Avho  has  edited  Shakespeare,  might  have  remembered 
the 

"  Would  ciirses  kill,  as  doth  the  mandrake's  groan." 

(Second  Part  of  Henry  VI.,  Act  III.  Scene  2.) 

and  the  notes  thereon  in  the  variorum  edition.  In  Ja 
cob  Grimm's  "  Deutsche  Mythologie,"  (Vol.  II.  p.  1154,) 
under  the  word  Alraun,  may  be  found  a  full  account  of 
the  siiperstitions  concerning  the  mandrake.  "  When  it 
is  dug  up,  it  groans  and  shrieks  so  dreadfully  that  the  dig 
ger  will  surely  die.  One  must,  therefore,  before  sunrise 
on  a  Friday,  having  first  stopped  one's  ears  with  wax  or 
cotton-wool,  take  with  him  an  entirely  black  dog  without 
a  white  hair  on  him,  make  the  sign  of  the  cross  three 
times  over  the  alraun,  and  dig  about  it  till  the  root 
holds  only  by  thin  fibres.  Then  tie  these  by  a  string  to 
the  tail  of  the  dog,  show  him  a  piece  of  bread,  and  run 
away  as  fast  as  possible.  The  dog  runs  eagerly  after 
the  bread,  pulls  up  the  root,  and  falls  stricken  dead  by 
its  groan  of  pain." 

These,  we  believe,  are  the  only  instances  in  which  Mr. 
Halliwell  has  ventured  to  give  any  opinion  upon  the 
14 


314  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

text,  except  as  to  a  palpable  misprint,  here  and  there. 
Two  of  these  we  have  already  cited.  There  is  one  other, 

—  "  p.  46,  line  10.     Inconstant.  —  An  error  for  incon 
stant."     Wherever  there  is  a  real  difficulty,  he  leaves  us 
in  the  lurch.     For  example,  iu.   "  What  you  Will,"  he 
prints  without  comment,  — 

"Ha!  he  mount  Chirall  on  the  wings  of  fume  !  " 

(Vol.  I.  p.  239.) 

which  should  be  "  mount  cheval,"  as  it  is  given  in  Mr. 
Dilke's  edition  (Old  English  Plays;  Vol.  II.  p.  222).  We 
cite  this,  not  as  the  worst,  but  the  shortest,  example  at 
hand. 

Some  of  Mr.  Halliwell's  notes  are  useful  and  interest 
ing,  —  as  that  on  "  keeling  the  pot,"  and  a  few  others, 

—  but  the  greater  part  are  utterly  useless.     He  thinks 
it  necessary,  for  instance,  to  explain  that  "to  speak  pure 
foole,  is  in  sense  equivalent  to  '  I  will  speak  like  a  pure 
fool,'  "  —  that  "  belkt  up  "  means  "  belched  up,"  —  that 
"  aprecocks  "  means  "  apricots."     He  has  notes  also  upon 
"meal-mouthed,"  "luxuriousnesse,"  "termagant,"  "fico," 
"  estro,"  "  a  nest  of  goblets,"  which  indicate  either  that 
the  "  general  reader  "  is  a  less  intelligent  person  in  Eng 
land  than  in  America,  or  that  Mr.  Halliwell's  standard  of 
scholarship  is  very  low.     We  ourselves,  from  our  limited 
reading,  can  supply  him  with  a  reference  which  will  ex 
plain  the  allusion  to  the  "  Scotch  barnacle  "  much  bet 
ter  than  his  citations  from  Sir  John  Maundeville  and 
Giraldus  Cambrensis,  —  namely,  note  8,  on  page   1 79 
of  a  Treatise  on  Worms,  by  Dr.  Kamesey,  court  physician 
to  Charles  II. 

We  tarn  now  to  Mr.  Hazlitt's  edition  of  Webster.  We 
wish  he  had  chosen  Chapman ;  for  Mr.  Dyce's  Webster 
is  hardly  out  of  print,  and,  we  believe,  has  just  gone 
through  a  second  and  revised  edition.  Webster  was  a 


LIBRARY    OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  315 

far  more  considerable  man  than  Marston,  and  infinitely 
above  him  in  genius.  Without  the  poetic  nature  of 
Marlowe,  or  Chapman's  somewhat  unwieldy  vigor  of 
thought,  he  had  that  inflammability  of  mind  which,  un- 
tempered  by  a  solid  understanding,  made  his  plays  a 
strange  mixture  of  vivid  expression,  incoherent  declama 
tion,  dramatic  intensity,  and  extravagant  conception  of 
character.  He  was  not,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word, 
a  great  dramatist.  Shakespeare  is  the  only  one  of  that 
age.  Marlowe  had  a  rare  imagination,  a  delicacy  of 
sense  that  made  him  the  teacher  of  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  in  versification,  and  was,  perhaps,  as  purely  a 
poet  as  any  that  England  has  produced ;  but  his  mind 
had  no  balance-wheel.  Chapman  abounds  in  splendid 
enthusiasms  of  diction,  and  now  and  then  dilates  our 
imaginations  with  suggestions  of  profound  poetic  depth. 
Ben  Jonson  was  a  conscientious  and  intelligent  workman, 
whose  plays  glow,  here  and  there,  with  the  golden  pollen 
of  that  poetic  feeling  with  which  his  age  impregnated  all 
thought  and  expression;  but  his  leading  characteristic, 
like  that  of  his  great  namesake,  Samuel,  was  a  hearty 
common  sense,  which  fitted  him  rather  to  be  a  great 
critic  than  a  great  poet.  He  had  a  keen  and  ready  eye 
for  the  comic  in  situation,  but  no  humor.  Fletcher  was 
as  much  a  poet  as  fancy  and  sentiment  can  make  any 
man.  Only  Shakespeare  wrote  comedy  and  tragedy  with 
truly  ideal  elevation  and  breadth.  Only  Shakespeare 
had  that  true  sense  of  humor  which,  like  the  universal 
solvent  sought  by  the  alchemists,  so  fuses  together  all 
the  elements  of  a  character,  (as  in  Falstaff,)  that  any 
question  of  good  or  evil,  of  dignified  or  ridiculous,  is 
silenced  by  the  apprehension  of  its  thorough  humanity. 
Rabelais  shows  gleams  of  it  in  Panurge ;  but,  in  our 
opinion,  no  ma.n  ever  possessed  it  in  an  equal  degree 
with  Shakespeare,  except  Cervantes  ;  no  man  has  since 


316  LIBRARY    OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

shown  anything  like  an  approach  to  it,  (for  Moliere's  qual 
ity  was  comic  power  rather  than  humor,)  except  Sterne, 
Fielding,  and  perhaps  Richter.  Only  Shakespeare  was 
endowed  with  that  healthy  equilibrium  of  nature  whose 
point  of  rest  was  midway  between  the  imagination  and 
the  understanding,  —  that  perfectly  unruffled  brain 
which  reflected  all  objects  with  almost  inhuman  impar 
tiality,  —  that  outlook  whose  range  was  ecliptical,  dom 
inating  all  zones  of  human  thought  and  action,  — that 
power  of  veri-similar  conception  which  could  take  away 
Richard  III.  from  History,  and  Ulysses  from  Homer,  — 
and  that  creative  faculty  whose  equal  touch  is  alike  vivi 
fying  in  Shallow  and  in  Lear.  He  alone  never  seeks  in 
abnormal  aud  monstrous  characters  to  evade  the  risks 
and  responsibilities  of  absolute  truthfulness,  nor  to  stim 
ulate  a  jaded  imagination  by  Caligulan  horrors  of  plot. 
He  is  never,  like  many  of  his  fellow-dramatists,  con 
fronted  with  unnatural  Frankensteins  of  his  own  making, 
whom  he  must  get  off  his  hands  as  best  he  may.  Given 
a  human  foible,  he  can  incarnate  it  in  the  nothingness 
of  Slender,  or  make  it  loom  gigantic  through  the  tragic 
twilight  of  Hamlet.  We  are  tired  of  the  vagueness 
which  classes  all  the  Elizabethan  playwrights  together 
as  "great  dramatists,"  —  as  if  Shakespeare  did  not  dif 
fer  from  them  in  kind  as  well  as  in  degree.  Fine  poets 
some  of  them  were ;  but  though  imagination  and  the 
power  of  poetic  expression  are,  singly,  not  uncommon 
gifts,  and  even  in  combination  not  without  secular  ex 
amples,  yet  it  is  the  rarest  of  earthly  phenomena  to  find 
them  joined  with  those  faculties  of  perception,  arrange 
ment,  and  plastic  instinct  in  the  loving  union  which 
alone  makes  a  great  dramatic  poet  possible.  We  suspect 
that  Shakespeare  will  long  continue  the  only  specimen 
of  the  genus.  His  contemporaries,  in  their  comedies, 
either  force  what  they  call  "  a  humor "  till  it  becomes 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  317 

fantastical,  or  hunt  for  jokes,  like  rat-catchers,  in  the 
sewers  of  human  nature  and  of  language.  In  their 
tragedies  they  become  heavy  without  grandeur,  like  Jon- 
son,  or  mistake  the  stilts  for  the  cothurnus,  as  Chapman 
and  Webster  too  often  do.  Every  new  edition  of  an  Eliza 
bethan  dramatist  is  but  the  putting  of  another  witness 
into  the  box  to  prove  the  inaccessibility  of  Shakespeare's 
stand-point  as  poet  and  artist. 

Webster's  most  famous  works  are  "  The  Duchess  of 
Malfy  "  and  "  Vittoria  Corombona,"  but  we  are  strongly 
inclined  to  call  "  The  Devil's  Law-Case  "  his  best  play. 
The  two  former  are  in  a  great  measure  answerable  for 
the  "  spasmodic  "  school  of  poets,  since  the  extravagances 
of  a  man  of  genius  are  as  sure  of  imitation  as  the  equa 
ble  self-possession  of  his  higher  moments  is  incapable  of 
it.  Webster  had,  no  doubt,  the  primal  requisite  of  a 
poet,  imagination,  but  in  him  it  was  truly  untamed,  and 
Aristotle's  admirable  distinction  between  the  Horrible 
and  the  Terrible  in  tragedy  was  never  better  illustrated 
and  confirmed  than  in  the  "Duchess"  and  "Vittoria." 
His  nature  had  something  of  the  sleuth-hound  quality 
in  it,  and  a  plot,  to  keep  his  mind  eager  on  the  trail, 
must  be  sprinkled  with  fresh  blood  at  every  turn.  We 
do  not  forget  all  the  fine  things  that  Lamb  has  said  of 
Webster,  but,  when  Lamb  wrote,  the  Elizabethan  drama 
was  an  El  Dorado,  whose  micaceous  sand,  even,  was 
treasured  as  auriferous,  —  and  no  wonder,  in  a  genera 
tion  which  admired  the  "  Botanic  Garden."  Webster  is 
the  Gherardo  della  Notte  of  his  day,  and  himself  calls 
his  "  Vittoria  Corombona  "  a  "  night-piece."  Though  he 
had  no  conception  of  Nature  in  its  large  sense,  as  some 
thing  pervading  a  whole  character  and  making  it  consist 
ent  with  itself,  nor  of  Art,  as  that  which  dominates  an 
entire  tragedy  and  makes  all  the  characters  foils  to  each 
other  and  tributaries  to  the  catastrophe,  yet  there  are 


318  LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS. 

flashes  of  Nature  in  his  plays,  struck  out  by  the  collisions 
of  passion,  and  dramatic  intensities  of  phrase  for  which 
it  would  be  hard  to  find  the  match.  The  "  prithee,  un 
do  this  button  "  of  Lear,  by  which  Shakespeare  makes  us 
feel  the  swelling  of  the  old  king's  heart,  and  that  the 
bodily  results  of  mental  anguish  have  gone  so  far  as  to 
deaden  for  the  moment  all  intellectual  consciousness  and 
forbid  all  expression  of  grief,  is  hardly  finer  than  the 
broken  verse  which  Webster  puts  into  the  mouth  of 
Ferdinand  when  he  sees  the  body  of  his  sister,  murdered 
by  his  own  procurement :  • — 

"  Cover  her  face :  mine  eyes  dazzle :  she  died  young." 

He  has  not  the  condensing  power  of  Shakespeare,  who 
squeezed  meaning  into  a  phrase  with  an  hydraulic  press, 
but  he  could  carve  a  cherry-stone  with  any  of  the  concet- 
tisti,  and  abounds  in  imaginative  quaintnesses  that  are 
worthy  of  Donne,  and  epigrammatic  tersenesses  that  re 
mind  us  of  Fuller.  Nor  is  he  wanting  in  poetic  phrases 
of  the  purest  crystallization.  Here  are  a  few  examples  :  — 

"  Oh,  if  there  be  another  world  i'  th'  moon, 
As  some  fantastics  dream,  I  could  wish  all  men, 
The  whole  race  of  them,  for  their  inconstancy, 
Sent  thither  to  people  that!  " 

(Old  Chaucer  was  yet  slier.  After  saying  that  Lamech 
was  the  first  faithless  lover,  he  adds,  — 

"  And  he  invented  tenti,  unless  men  lie,"  — 
implying  that  he  was  the  prototype  of  nomadic  men.) 

"  Virtue  is  ever  sowing  of  her  seeds : 
In  the  trenches,  for  the  soldier;  in  the  wakeful  study, 
For  the  scholar;  in  the  furrows  of  the  sea, 
For  men  of  our  profession  [merchants] ;  all  of  which 
Arise  and  spring  up  honor." 

("  Of  all  which,"  Mr.  Hazlitt  prints  it.) 

"  Poor  Jolenta!  should  she  hear  of  this, 
She  would  not  after  the  report  keep  fresh 
So  long  as  flowers  on  graves." 


LIBRARY   OF    OLD   AUTHORS.  319 

"  For  sin  and  shame  are  ever  tied  together 
With  Gordian  knots  of  such  a  strong  thread  spun, 
They  cannot  without  violence  be  undone." 

"  One  whose  mind 

Appears  more  like  a  ceremonious  chapel 
Full  of  sweet  music,  than  a  thronging  presence." 

"What  is  death? 

The  safest  trench  i'  th'  world  to  keep  man  free 
From  Fortune's  gunshot." 

"  It  has  ever  been  my  opinion 
That  there  are  none  love  perfectly  indeed, 
But  those  that  hang  or  drown  themselves  for  love," 

says  Julio,  anticipating  Butler's 

"  But  he  that  drowns,  or  blows  out 's  brains, 
The  Devil's  in  him,  If  he  feigns." 

He  also  anticipated  La  Rochefoucauld  and  Byron  in  their 
apophthegm  concerning  woman's  last  love.  In  "  The 
Devil's  Law-Case,"  Leonora  says,  — 

"  For,  as  we  love  our  youngest  children  best, 
So  the  last  fruit  of  our  affection, 
Wherever  we  bestow  it,  is  most  strong, 
Most  violent,  most  unresistible; 
Since  't  is,  indeed,  our  latest  harvest-home, 
Last  merriment  'fore  winter." 

In  editing  Webster,  Mr.  Hazlitt  had  the  advantage 
(except  in  a  single  doubtful  play)  of  a  predecessor  in  the 
Rev.  Alexander  Dyce,  beyond  all  question  the  best  living 
scholar  of  the  literature  of  the  times  of  Elizabeth  and 
James  I.  If  he  give  no  proof  of  remarkable  fitness  for 
his  task,  he  seems,  at  least,  to  have  been  diligent  and 
painstaking.  His  notes  are  short  and  to  the  point,  and 
• —  which  we  consider  a  great  merit  — •  at  the  foot  of  the 
page.  If  he  had  added  a  glossarial  index,  we  should 
have  been  still  better  pleased.  Mr.  Hazlitt  seems  to 
have  read  over  the  text  with  some  care,  and  he  has  had 
the  good  sense  to  modernize  the  orthography,  or,  as  he 
says,  has  "observed  the  existing  standard  of  spelling 


320  LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS. 

throughout."  Yet  —  for  what  reason  we  cannot  imagine 
—  he  prints  "  I "  for  "  ay,"  taking  the  pains  to  explain 
it  every  time  in  a  note,  and  retains  "  banquerout  "  and 
"  coram "  apparently  for  the  sake  of  telling  us  that 
they  mean  "  bankrupt "  and  "  quorum."  He  does  not 
seem  to  have  a  quick  ear  for  scansion,  which  would 
sometimes  have  assisted  him  to  the  true  reading.  We 
give  an  example  or  two  :  — 

"  The  obligation  wherein  we  all  stood  bound 
Cannot  be  concealed  [cancelled]  without  great  reproach." 

"  The  realm,  not  they, 

Must  be  regarded.     Be  [we]  strong  and  bold, 
We  are  the  people's  factors." 

"  Shall  not  be  o'erburdened  [overburdened]  in  our  reign 

''  A  merry  heart 
And  a  good  stomach  to  [a]  feast  are  all." 

"  Have  her  meat  serv'd  up  by  bawds  and  ruffians."     [dele  "  up."J 

"  Brother  or  father 
In  [a]  dishonest  suit,  shall  be  to  me." 

"  What's  she  in  Rome  your  greatness  cannot  awe, 
Or  your  rich  purse  purchase?    Promises  and  threats."     [dele  the 
second  "your."] 

"  Through  clouds  of  envy  and  disast  [rous]  change." 
"  The  Devil  drives ;  'tis  [it  is]  full  time  to  go." 

He  has  overlooked  some  strange  blunders.  What  is  the 
meaning  of 

"  Laugh  at  your  misery,  as  foredeeming  yon 
An  idle  meteor,  which  drawn  forth,  the  earth 
Would  soon  be  lost  i'  the  air  "  ? 

We  hardly  need  say  that  it  should  be 

"  An  idle  meteor,  which,  drawn  forth  the  earth, 
Would."  &c. 

"forwardness  "  for  /rowardness,"  (Vol.  II.  p.  87,)  "  ten 
nis-balls  struck  and  banded"  for  "b&ndied"  (Ib.  p.  275,) 
may  be  errors  of  the  press ;  but 

"  Come,  I'll  love  you  wisely: 
That's  jealousy," 


LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS.  321 

has  crept  in  by  editorial  oversight  for  "  wisely,  that  's 
jealously."     So  have 

"  Ay,  the  great  emperor  of  [or]  the  mighty  Cham  " ; 
and 

'  This  wit  [icith]  taking  long  journeys  "; 

and 

"  Virginius,  thou  ddst  but  supply  my  place, 

I  thine:  Fortune  hath  lift  me  [ihee]  to  my  chair, 
And  thrown  me  headlong  to  thy  pleading  bar  " ; 


and 


I'll  pour  my  soul  into  my  daughter's  belly,  [body,] 
And  with  my  soldier's  tears  embalm  her  wounds." 


We  suggest  that  the  change  of  an  a  to  an  r  would 
make  sense  of  the  following  :  "  Come,  my  little  punk, 
with  thy  two  compositors,  to  this  unlawful  painting- 
house,"  [printing-house,]  which  Mr.  Hazlitt  awkwardly 
endeavors  to  explain  by  this  note  on  the  word  compos 
itors,  —  "  i.  e.  (conjecturally),  making  up  the  composition 
of  the  picture  "  !  Our  readers  can  decide  for  themselves ; 
—  the  passage  occurs  Vol.  I.  p.  214. 

We  think  Mi*.  Hazlitt's  notes  are,  in  the  main,  good  ; 
but  we  should  like  to  know  his  authority  for  saying  that 
pench  means  "  the  hole  in  a  bench  by  which  it  was  taken 
up," — that  "descant"  means  "  look  askant  on," — and 
that  "  I  wis "  is  equivalent  to  "  I  surmise,  imagine," 
•which  it  surely  is  not  in  the  passage  to  which  his  note  is 
appended.  On  page  9,  Vol.  I.,  we  read  in  the  text, 

"  To  whom,  my  lord,  bends  thus  your  awe," 

and  in  the  note,  "  i.  e.  submission.  The  original  has 
aue,  which,  if  it  mean  ave,  is  unmeaning  here."  Did  Mr. 
Hazlitt  never  see  a  picture  of  the  Annunciation  with  ave 
written  on  the  scroll  proceeding  from  the  bending  angel's 
mouth  ?  We  find  the  same  word  in  Vol.  III.  p.  217  :  — 

"  Whose  station's  built  on  avees  and  applause." 

Vol.  III.  pp.  47,  48  :  — 

14*  u 


322  LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS. 

"  And  then  rest,  gentle  bones  ;  yet  pray 
That  when  by  the  precise  you  are  view'd, 
A  supersedeas  be  not  sued 
To  remove  you  to  a  place  more  airy, 
That  in  your  stead  they  may  keep  chary 
Stockfish  or  seacoal,  for  the  abuses 
Of  sacrilege  have  turned  graves  to  viler  uses." 

To  the  last  verse  Mr.  Hazlitt  appends  this  note,  "  Than 
that  of  burning  men's  bones  for  fuel."  There  is  no  allu 
sion  here  to  burning  men's  bones,  but  simply  to  the  des 
ecration  of  graveyards  by  building  warehouses  upon 
them,  in  digging  the  foundations  for  which  the  bones 
would  be  thrown  out.  The  allusion  is,  perhaps,  to  the 
"  Churchyard  of  the  Holy  Trinity  "  ;  —  see  Stow's  Sur 
vey,  ed.  1603,  p.  126.  Elsewhere,  in  the  same  play, 
Webster  alludes  bitterly  to  "  begging  church-land." 

Vol.  I.  p.  73,  "  And  if  he  walk  through  the  street,  he 
ducks  at  the  penthouses,  like  an  ancient  that  dares  not 
flourish  at  the  oathtaking  of  the  praetor  for  fear  of  the 
signposts."  Mr.  Hazlitt's  note  is,  "  Ancient  was  a  stand 
ard  or  flag  ;  also  an  ensign,  of  which  Skinner  says  it  is  a 
corruption.  What  the  meaning  of  the  simile  is  the  pres 
ent  editor  cannot  suggest."  We  confess  we  find  no  diffi 
culty.  The  meaning  plainly  is,  that  he  ducks  for  fear 
of  hitting  the  penthouses,  as  an  ensign  on  the  Lord 
Mayor's  day  dares  not  flourish  his  standard  for  fear  of 
hitting  the  signposts.  We  suggest  the  query,  whether 
ancient,  in  this  sense,  be  not  a  corruption  of  the  Italian 
word  anziano. 

Want  of  space  compels  us  to  leave  many  other  pas 
sages,  which  we  had  marked  for  comment,  unnoticed. 
We  are  surprised  that  Mr.  Hazlitt,  (see  his  Introduction 
to  "  Vittoria  Corombona,")  in  undertaking  to  give  us 
some  information  concerning  the  Dukedom  and  Castle  of 
Bracciano,  should  uniformly  spell  it  Brachiano.  Shake 
speare's  Petruchio  might  have  put  him  on  his  guard. 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS.  323 

We  should  be  glad  also  to  know  in  what  part  of  Italy 
he  places  Malfi. 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  General  Introduction  supplies  us  with 
no  new  information,  but  this  was  hardly  to  be  expected 
where  Mr.  Dyce  had  already  gone  over  the  field.  We 
wish  that  he  had  been  able  to  give  us  better  means 
of  distinguishing  the  three  almost  contemporary  John 
Websters  one  from  the  other,  for  we  think  the  internal 
evidence  is  enough  to  show  that  all  the  plays  attributed 
to  the  author  of  the  "Duchess"  and  "  Vittoria"  could 
not  have  been  written  by  the  same  person.  On  the 
whole,  he  has  given  us  a  very  respectable,  and  certainly 
a  very  pretty,  edition  of  an  eminent  poet. 

We  could  almost  forgive  all  other  shortcomings  of  Mr. 
Smith's  library  for  the  great  gift  it  brings  us  in  the  five 
volumes  of  Chapman's  translations.  Coleridge,  sending 
Chapman's  Homer  to  Wordsworth,  writes,  "  What  is 
stupidly  said  of  Shakespeare  is  really  true  and  appropri 
ate  of  Chapman  ;  mighty  faults  counterpoised  by  mighty 

beauties It  is  as  truly  an  original  poem  as  the 

Faery  Queene  ;  —  it  will  give  you  small  idea  of  Homer, 
though  a  far  truer  one  than  Pope's  epigrams,  or  Cowper's 
cumbersome  most  anti-Homeric  Miltonism.  For  Chap 
man  writes  and  feels  as  a  poet,  —  as  Homer  might  have 
written  had  he  lived  in  England  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Elizabeth.  In  short,  it  is  an  exquisite  poem,  in  spite  of 
its  frequent  and  perverse  quaintnesses  and  harshnesses, 
which  are,  however,  amply  repaid  by  almost  unexampled 
sweetness  and  beauty  of  language,  all  over  spirit  and 
feeling."  *  From  a  passage  of  his  Preface  it  would  ap 
pear  that  Chapman  had  been  criticised  pretty  sharply 
in  his  own  day  for  amplifying  his  author.  "  And  this 
one  example  I  thought  necessary  to  insert  here  to  show 
*  Literary  Remains,  Vol.  I.  pp.  259, 260. 


324  LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS. 

my  detractors  that  they  have  no  reason  to  vilify  my 
circumlocution  sometimes,  when  their  most  approved 
Grecians,  Homer's  interpreters  generally,  hold  him  fit 
to  be  so  converted.  Yet  how  much  I  differ,  and  with 
what  authority,  let  my  impartial  and  judicial  reader 
judge.  Always  conceiving  how  pedantical  and  absurd 
an  affectation  it  is  in  the  interpretation  of  any  author 
(much  more  of  Homer)  to  turn  him  word  for  word,  when 
(according  to  Horace  and  other  best  lawgivers  to  trans 
lators)  it  is  the  part  of  every  knowing  and  jxidicial  inter 
preter  not  to  follow  the  number  and  order  of  words,  but 
the  material  things  themselves,  and  sentences  to  weigh 
diligently,  and  to  clothe  and  adorn  them  with  words  and 
such  a  style  and  form  of  oration  as  are  most  apt  for  the 
language  in  which  they  are  converted."  Again  in  his 
verses  To  the  Reader,  he  speaks  of 

"  The  ample  transmigration  to  be  shown 
By  nature-loving  Poesy," 

and  defends  his  own  use  of  "  needful  periphrases,"  and 
says  that  "  word  for  word  "  translation  is  to 

"  Make  fish  with  fowl,  camels  with  whales,  engender." 

"  For  even  as  different  a  production 
Ask  Greek  and  English  :  since,  as  they  in  sounds 
And  letters  shun  one  form  and  unison, 
So  have  their  sense  and  elegancy  bounds 
In  their  distinguished  natures,  and  require 
Only  a  judgment  to  make  both  consent 
In  sense  and  elocution." 

There  are  two  theories  of  translation,  —  literal  para 
phrase  and  free  reproduction.  At  best,  the  translation 
of  poetry  is  but  an  imitation  of  natural  flowers  in  cam 
bric  or  wax  ;  and  however  much  of  likeness  there  may 
be,  the  aroma,  whose  charm  of  indefinable  suggestion  in 
the  association  of  ideas  is  so  powerful,  is  precisely  what 
is  lost  irretrievably.  From  where  it  lurked  in  the  im 
mortal  verse,  a  presence  divined  rather  than  ascertained, 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  325 

baffling  the  ear  which  it  enchanted,  escaping  the  grasp 
which  yet  it  thrilled,  airy,  evanescent,  imperishable, 
beckoning  the  imagination  with  promises  better  than 
any  fulfilment, 

"  The  parting  genius  is  with  sighing  sent." 

The  paraphrase  is  a  plaster-cast  of  the  Grecian  urn  ;  the 
reproduction,  if  by  a  man  of  genius,  is  like  Keats's  ode, 
which  makes  the  figures  move  and  the  leaves  tremble 
again,  if  not  with  the  old  life,  with  a  sorcery  which  de 
ceives  the  fancy.  Of  all  English  poets,  Keats  was  the 
one  to  have  translated  Homer. 

In  any  other  than  a  mere  prose  version  of  a  great 
poem,  we  have  a  right  to  demand  that  it  give  us  at 
least  an  adequate  impression  of  force  and  originality. 
We  have  a  right  to  ask,  If  this  poem  were  published 
now  for  the  first  time,  as  the  work  of  a  contemporary, 
should  we  read  it,  not  with  the  same,  but  with  anything 
like  the  same  conviction  of  its  freshness,  vigor,  and  origi 
nality,  its  high  level  of  style  and  its  witchery  of  verse, 
that  Homer,  if  now  for  the  first  time  discovered,  would 
infallibly  beget  in  us  1  Perhaps  this  looks  like  asking  for 
a  new  Homer  to  translate  the  old  one ;  but  if  this  be  too 
much,  it  is  certainly  not  unfair  to  insist  that  the  feeling 
given  us  should  be  that  of  life,  and  not  artifice. 

The  Homer  of  Chapman,  whatever  its  defects,  alone 
of  all  English  versions  has  this  crowning  merit  of  being, 
where  it  is  most  successful,  thoroughly  alive.  He  has 
made  for  us  the  best  poem  that  has  yet  been  Englished 
out  of  Homer,  and  in  so  far  gives  us  a  truer  idea  of  him. 
Of  all  translators  he  is  farthest  removed  from  the  fault 
with  which  he  charges  others,  when  he  says  that  "  our 
divine  master's  most  ingenious  imitating  the  life  of  things 
(which  is  the  soul  of  a  poem)  is  never  respected  nor  per 
ceived  by  his  interpreters  only  standing  pedantically  on 


326  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

the  grammar  and  words,  utterly  ignorant  of  the  sense 
and  grace  of  him."  His  mastery  of  English  is  something 
•wonderful  even  in  an  age  of  masters,  when  the  language 
was  still  a  mother-tongue,  and  not  a  contrivance  of  ped 
ants  and  grammarians.  He  had  a  reverential  sense  of 
"  our  divine  Homer's  depth  and  gravity,  which  will  not 
open  itself  to  the  curious  austerity  of  belaboring  art,  but 
only  to  the  natural  and  most  ingenious  soul  of  our 
thrice-sacred  Poesy."  His  task  was  as  holy  to  him  as  a 
version  of  Scripture  ;  he  justifies  the  tears  of  Achilles  by 
those  of  Jesus,  and  the  eloquence  of  his  horse  by  that  of 
Balaam's  less  noble  animal.  He  does  not  always  keep 
close  to  his  original,  but  he  sins  no  more,  even  in  this, 
than  any  of  his  rivals.  He  is  especially  great  in  the 
similes.  Here  he  rouses  himself  always,  and  if  his  en 
thusiasm  sometimes  lead  him  to  heighten  a  little,  or 
even  to  add  outright,  he  gives  us  a  picture  full  of  life 
and  action,  or  of  the  grandeur  and  beauty  of  nature,  as 
stirring  to  the  fancy  as  his  original.  Of  all  who  have 
attempted  Homer,  he  has  the  topping  merit  of  being  in 
spired  by  him. 

In  the  recent  discussions  of  Homeric  translation  in 
England,  it  has  always  been  taken  for  granted  that  we 
had  or  could  have  some  adequate  conception  of  Homer's 
metre.  Lord  Derby,  in  his  Preface,  plainly  assumes 
this.  But  there  can  be  no  greater  fallacy.  No  human 
ears,  much  less  Greek  ones,  could  have  endured  what, 
with  our  mechanical  knowledge  of  the  verse,  ignorance 
of  the  accent,  and  English  pronunciation,  we  blandly  ac 
cept  for  such  music  as  Homer  chanted.  We  have  utterly 
lost  the  tune  and  cannot  reproduce  it.  Mr.  Newman 
conjectures  it  to  have  been  something  like  Yankee  Doo 
dle  ;  Mr.  Arnold  is  sure  it  was  the  English  hexameter ; 
and  they  are  both  partly  right  so  far  as  we  may  trust 
our  reasonable  impressions ;  for,  after  all,  an  impression 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  327 

is  all  that  we  have.     Cowper  attempts  to  give  the  ring 

of  the  dpyvpeoto  /Stoto  by 

"  Dread-sounding,  bounding  on  the  silver  bow," 

which  only  too  fatally  recalls  the  old  Scottish  dancing- 
tune,  — 

"  Amaisit  I  gaisit 

To  see,  led  at  command, 

A  strampant  and  rampant 

Ferss  lyon  in  his  hand." 

The  attempt  was  in  the  right  direction,  however,  for 
Homer,  like  Dante  and  Shakespeare,  like  all  who  really 
command  language,  seems  fond  of  playing  with  asso 
nances.  No  doubt  the  Homeric  verse  consented  at  will 
to  an  eager  rapidity,  and  no  doubt  also  its  general  char 
acter  is  that  of  prolonged  but  unmonotonous  roll.  Every 
body  says  it  is  like  the  long  ridges  of  the  sea,  some 
overtopping  their  neighbors  a  little,  each  with  an  inde 
pendent  undulation  of  its  crest,  yet  all  driven  by  a 
common  impulse,  and  breaking,  not  with  the  sudden 
snap  of  an  unyielding  material,  but  one  after  the  other, 
with  a  stately  curve,  to  slide  back  and  mingle  with  those 
that  follow.  Chapman's  measure  has  the  disadvantage 
of  an  association  with  Sternhold  and  Hopkins,  but  it  has 
the  merit  of  length,  and,  where  he  is  in  the  right  mood, 
is  free,  spirited,  and  sonorous.  Above  all,  there  is  every 
where  the  movement  of  life  and  passion  in  it.  Chap 
man  was  a  master  of  verse,  making  it  hurry,  linger,  or 
stop  short,  to  suit  the  meaning.  Like  all  great  versifiers 
he  must  be  read  with  study,  for  the  slightest  change  of 
accent  loses  the  expression  of  an  entire  passage.  His 
great  fault  as  a  translator  is  that  he  takes  fire  too  easily 
and  runs  beyond  his  author.  Perhaps  he  intensifies  too 
much,  though  this  be  a  fault  on  the  right  side ;  he  cer 
tainly  sometimes  weakens  the  force  of  passages  by  crowd 
ing  in  particulars  which  Homer  had  wisely  omitted,  for 


328  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

Homer's  simplicity  is  by  no  means  mere  simplicity  of 
thought,  nor,  as  it  is  often  foolishly  called,  of  nature.  It  is 
the  simplicity  of  consummate  art,  the  last  achievement  of 
poets  and  the  invariable  characteristic  of  the  greatest 
among  them.  To  Chapman's  mind  once  warmed  to  its 
work,  the  words  are  only  a  mist,  suggesting,  while  it 
hides,  the  divine  form  of  the  original  image  or  thought ; 
and  his  imagination  strives  to  body  forth  that,  as  he 
conceives  it,  in  all  its  celestial  proportions.  Let  us  com 
pare  with  Lord  Derby's  version,  as  the  latest,  a  passage 
where  Chapman  merely  intensifies  (Book  XIIL,  begin 
ning  at  the  86th  verse  in  Lord  Derby,  the  73d  of  Chap 
man,  and  the  76th  of  Homer)  :  — 

"  Whom  answered  thus  the  son  of  Telamon : 
'  My  hands,  too,  grasp  with  firmer  hold  the  spear, 
My  spirit,  like  thine,  is  stirred;  I  feel  my  feet 
Instinct  with  fiery  life;  nor  should  I  fear 
With  Hector,  son  of  Priam,  in  his  might 
Alone  to  meet,  and  grapple  to  the  death.'  " 

Thus  Lord  Derby.     Chapman  renders  :  — 

"  This  Telamonius  thus  received:  '  So,  to  my  thoughts,  my  hands 
Burn  with  desire  to  toss  my  lance;  each  foot  beneath  me  stands 
Bare  on  bright  fire  to  use  his  speed ;  my  heart  is  raised  so  high, 
That  to  encounter  Hector's  self  I  long  insatiately.1 " 

There  is  no  question  which  version  is  the  more  ener 
getic.  Is  Lord  Derby's  nearer  the  original  in  being 
tamer  ]  He  has  taken  the  "  instinct  with  fiery  life  " 
from  Chapman's  hint.  The  original  has  simply  "  rest 
less,"  or  more  familiarly  "in  a  fidget."  There  is  noth 
ing  about  "  grappling  to  the  death,"  and  "  nor  should  I 
fear  "  is  feeble  where  Chapman  with  his  "  long  insatiate 
ly"  is  literal.  We  will  give  an  example  where  Chap 
man  has  amplified  his  original  (Book  XVI.  v.  426  ; 
Derby,  494  ;  Chapman,  405) :  - 

"  Down  jumped  he  from  his  chariot;  down  leapt  his  foe  as  light; 
And  as,  on  some  far-looking  rock,  a  cast  of  vultures  fight, 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  329 

Fly  on  each  other,  strike  and  truss,  part,  meet,  and  then  stick  by, 
Tug  both  with  crooked  beaks  and  seres,  cry,  fight,  and  fight  and  cry, 
So  fiercely  fought  these  angry  kings."  * 

Lord  Derby's  version  is  nearer  :  — 

"  He  said,  and  from  his  car,  accoutred,  sprang; 
Patroclus  saw  and  he  too  leaped  to  earth. 
As  on  a  lofty  rock,  with  angry  screams, 
Hook-beaked,  with  talons  curved,  two  vultures  fight, 
So  with  loud  shouts  these  two  to  battle  rushed." 

Chapman  has  made  his  first  line  out  of  two  in  Homer, 
but,  granting  the  license,  how  rapid  and  springy  is  the 
verse  !  Lord  Derby's  "  withs "  are  not  agreeable,  his 
"  shouts "  is  an  ill-chosen  word  for  a  comparison  with 
vultures,  "  talons  curved  "  is  feeble,  and  his  verse  is,  as 
usual,  mainly  built  up  of  little  blocks  of  four  syllables 
each.  "To  battle"  also  is  vague.  With  whom?  Ho 
mer  says  that  they  rushed  each  at  other.  We  shall  not 
discuss  how  much  license  is  loyal  in  a  translator,  but,  as 
we  think  his  chief  aim  should  be  to  give  a  feeling  of  that 
life  and  spirit  which  makes  the  immortality  of  his  origi 
nal,  and  is  the  very  breath  in  the  nostrils  of  all  poetry, 
he  has  a  right  to  adapt  himself  to  the  genius  of  his  own 
language.  If  he  would  do  justice  to  his  author,  he  must 
make  up  in  one  passage  for  his  unavoidable  shortcomings 
in  another.  He  may  here  and  there  take  for  granted 
certain  exigencies  of  verse  in  his  original  which  he  feels 
in  his  own  case.  Even  Dante,  who  boasted  that  no  word 
had  ever  made  him  say  what  he  did  not  wish,  should 
have  made  an  exception  of  rhyming  ones,  for  these  some 
times,  even  in  so  abundant  a  language  as  the  Italian, 
have  driven  the  most  straightforward  of  poets  into  an 
awkward  detour. 

We  give  one  more  passage  from  Chapman  :  — 

*  Chapman  himself  was  evidently  pleased  with  this,  for  he  cites  it 
as  a  sample  of  his  version. 


330  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

"  And  all  in  golden  weeds 

He  clothed  himself;  the  golden  scourge  most  elegantly  done 
He  took  and  mounted  to  his  seat;  and  then  the  god  begun 
To  drive  his  chariot  through  the  waves.    From  whirl-pits  every  way 
The  whales  exulted  under  him,  and  knew  their  king;  the  sea 
For  joy  did  open,  and  his  horse  so  swift  and  lightly  flew 
The  under  axle-tree  of  brass  no  drop  of  water  drew." 

Here  the  first  half  is  sluggish  and  inadequate,  but  what 
surging  vigor,  what  tumult  of  the  sea,  what  swiftness, 
in  the  last !  Here  is  Lord  Derby's  attempt :  — 

"  All  clad  in  gold,  the  golden  lash  he  grasped 
Of  curious  work,  and,  mounting  on  his  car, 
Skimmed  o'er  the  waves ;  from  all  the  depths  below 
Gambolled  around  the  monsters  of  the  deep, 
Acknowledging  their  king;  the  joyous  sea 
Parted  her  waves;  swift  flew  the  bounding  steeds, 
Nor  was  the  brazen  axle  wet  with  spray." 

Chapman  here  is  truer  to  his  master,  and  the  motion  is 
in  the  verse  itself.  Lord  Derby's  is  description,  and  not 
picture.  "  Monsters  of  the  deep  "  is  an  example  of  the 
hackneyed  periphrases  in  which  he  abounds,  like  all  men 
to  whom  language  is  a  literary  tradition,  and  not  a  living 
gift  of  the  Muses.  "  Lash  "  is  precisely  the  wrong  word. 
Chapman  is  always  great  at  sea.  Here  is  another  exam 
ple  from  the  Fourteenth  Book  :  — 

"  And  as,  when  with  unwieldy  waves  the  great  sea  forefeels  winds 
That  both  ways  murmur,  and  no  way  her  certain  current  finds, 
But  pants  and  swells  confusedly,  here  goes,  and  there  will  stay, 
Till  on  it  air  casts  one  firm  wind,  and  then  it  rolls  away." 

Observe  how  the  somewhat  ponderous  movement  of  the 
first  verse  assists  the  meaning  of  the  words. 

He  is  great,  too,  in  single  phrases  and  lines  :  — 

"  And  as,  from  top  of  some  steep  hill,  the  Lightener  strips  a  cloud 
And  lets  a  great  sky  out  of  Heaven,  in  whose  delightsome  light 
All  prominent  foreheads,  forests,  towers,  and  temples  cheer  the  sight" 

(Book  XVI.  v.  286.) 

The  lion  "  lets  his  rough  brows  down  so  low  they  hide 
his  eyes";  the  flames  "wrastle"  in  the  woods;  "rude 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  331 

feet  dim  the  day  with  a  fog  of  dust ;  "  and  so  in  a  hun 
dred  other  instances. 

For  an  example  of  his  more  restrained  vigor,  take  the 
speech  of  Sarpedon  in  the  Twelfth  Book  of  the  Iliad, 
and  for  poetic  beauty,  the  whole  story  of  Ulysses  and 
Nausikaa  in  the  Odyssey.  It  was  here  that  Keats  made 
himself  Grecian  and  learned  to  versify. 

Mr.  Hooper  has  done  his  work  of  editing  well.  But 
he  has  sometimes  misapprehended  his  author,  and  dis 
torted  his  meaning  by  faulty  punctuation.  In  one  of 
the  passages  already  cited,  Mr.  Hooper's  text  stands 
thus  :  "  Lest  I  be  prejudiced  with  opinion,  to  dissent, 
of  ignorance,  or  singularity."  All  the  commas  which 
darken  the  sense  should  be  removed.  Chapman  meant 
to  say,  "  Lest  I  be  condemned  beforehand  by  people 
thinking  I  dissent  out  of  ignorance  or  singularity."  (Iliad 
Vol.  I.  p.  23.)  So  on  the  next  page  the  want  of  a  hyphen 
makes  nonsense  :  "And  saw  the  round  coming  [round- 
coming]  of  this  silver  bow  of  our  Phoebus,"  that  is,  the 
crescent  coming  to  the  full  circle.  In  the  translations, 
too,  the  pointing  needs  reformation  now  and  then,  but 
shows,  on  the  whole,  a  praiseworthy  fidelity.  We  will 
give  a  few  examples  of  what  we  believe  to  be  errors  on 
the  part  of  Mr.  Hooper,  who,  by  the  way,  is  weakest  on 
points  which  concern  the  language  of  Chapman's  day. 
We  follow  the  order  of  the  text  as  most  convenient. 

"  Bid  "  (II.  i.)  is  explained  to  mean  "  threaten,  chal 
lenge,"  where  "  offer  "  would  be  the  right  word. 

"  And  cast 
The  offal  of  all  to  the  deep."    (II.  i.  309.) 

Surely  a  slip  of  Chapman's  pen.  He  rmist  have  intended 
to  write  "  Of  all  the  offal,"  a  transversion  common  with 
him  and  needed  here  to  avoid  a  punning  jingle. 

"  So  much  I  must  affirm  our  power  exceeds  th'  inhabitant."  (II.  ii.  110.) 


332  LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS. 

Mr.  Hooper's  note  is  "  iuhabiters,  viz.  of  Troy."  "In 
habitant  "  is  an  adjective  agreeing  with  "  power."  Our 
power  without  exceeds  that  within. 

"  Yet  all  this  time  to  stay, 

Out  of  our  judgments,  for  our  end,  and  now  to  take  our  way 
Without  it  were  absurd  and  vile."     (11.  ii.  257.) 

A  note  on  this  passage  tells  us  that  "  out  of  judgments" 
means  "  against  our  inclinations."  It  means  simply  "in. 
accordance  with  our  good  judgment,"  just  as  we  still  say 
"out  of  his  wisdom."  Compare  11.  iii.  63, 

"  Hector,  because  thy  sharp  reproof  is  out  of  justice  given, 
I  take  it  well." 

"  And  as  Jove,  brandishing  a  star  which  men  a  comet  call, 
Hurls  out  his  curled  hair  abroad,  that  from  his  brand  exhals 
A  thousand  sparks."    (II.  iv.  85.) 

Mr.  Hooper's  note  is  "  '  Which  men  a  comet  call1  —  so 
both  the  folios.  Dr.  Taylor  has  printed  '  which  man  a 
comet  calls.'  This  certainly  suits  the  rhyme,  but  I  ad 
here  to  Chapman's  text."  Both  editors  have  misunder 
stood  the  passage.  The  fault  is  not  in  "  call "  but  in 
"  exhals,"  a  clear  misprint  for  "  exhall,"  the  spelling,  as 
was  common,  being  conformed  to  the  visible  rhyme. 
"  That "  means  "  so  that "  (a  frequent  Elizabethan  con 
struction)  and  "exhall"  is  governed  by  "  sparks."  The 
meaning  is,  "As  when  Jove,  brandishing  a  comet,  hurls 
out  its  curled  hair  so  that  a  thousand  sparks  exhale 
from  its  burning." 

"  The  evicJce  skipping  from  the  rock." 

Mr.  Hooper  tells  us,  "  It  is  doubtful  what  this  word 
really  is.'  Dr.  Taylor  suggests  that  it  may  probably 
mean  the  evict,  or  doomed  one  —  but  ]  It  is  possible 
Chapman  meant  to  Anglicize  the  Greek  a?| ;  or  should 
we  read  Ibex,  as  the  at£  i£aXos  was  such  1 "  The  word 
means  the  chamois,  and  is  merely  the  English  form  of  the 
French  ibiche.  Dr.  Taylor's  reading  would  amaze  us 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  333 

were  we  not  familiar  with  the  commentators  on  Shake 
speare. 

"  And  now  they  out-ray  to  your  fleet."     (II.  v.  793.) 

"  Out-ray —  spread  out  in  array  ;  abbreviated  from  ar 
ray.  Dr.  Taylor  says  'rush  out,'  from  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  '  mm,'  to  flow ;  but  there  seems  no  necessity  for 
such  an  etymology."  We  should  think  not !  Chapman, 
like  Pope,  made  his  first  sketch  from  the  French,  and 
corrected  it  by  the  Greek.  Those  who  would  under 
stand  Chapman's  English  must  allow  for  traces  of  his 
French  guide  here  and  there.  This  is  one  of  them,  per 
haps.  The  word  is  etymologically  unrelated  to  array. 
It  is  merely  the  old  French  oultreer,  a  derivative  of 
ultra.  It  means  "  they  pass  beyond  their  gates  even  to 
your  fleet."  He  had  said  just  before  that  formerly 
"your  foes  durst  not  a  foot  address  ivithout  their  ports." 
The  word  occurs  again  II.  xxiii.  413. 

"  When  none,  though  many  kings  put  on,  could  make  his  vaunt,  he  led 
Tydides  to  renewed  assault  or  issued  first  the  dike."     ill.  viii.  217.) 

"  Tydides.  —  He  led  Tydides,  i.  e.  Tydides  he  led.  An 
unusual  construction."  Not  in  the  least.  The  old  print 
ers  or  authors  sometimes  put  a  comma  where  some  con 
necting  particle  was  left  out.  We  had  just  now  an  in 
stance  where  one  took  the  place  of  so.  Here  it  supplies 
that.  "None  could  make  his  vaunt  that  he  led  (that 
is,  was  before)  Tydides."  We  still  use  the  word  in  the 
same  sense,  as  the  "  leading  "  horse  in  a  race. 
"  And  all  did  wilfully  expect  the  silver- throned  morn."  (II.  viii.  497  ) 
"  Wilfully  —  willingly,  anxiously."  Wishfully,  as  else 
where  in  Chapman. 

"  And  as,  upon  a  rich  man's  crop  of  barley  or  of  wheat, 
Opposed  for  swiftness  at  their  work,  a  sort  of  reapers  sweat." 

"  Opposed —  standing  opposite  to  one  another  for  expedi 
tion's  sake."  We  hope  Mr.  Hooper  imderstood  his  own 


334  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

note,  for  it  baffles  us  utterly.  The  meaning  is  simply 
"  pitted  against  each  other  to  see  which  will  reap  most 
swiftly."  In  a  note  (II.  xi.  417)  we  are  told  that  "the 
etymology  [of  luceni]  seems  uncertain."  It  is  nothing 
more  than  a  corruption  of  the  old  French  leucerve  (lotip- 

cervier), 

"  I  would  then  make-in  in  deed  and  steep 
My  income  in  their  bloods."    (II.  xvii.  481.) 

"  Income  —  communication,  or  infusion,  of  courage  from 
the  Gods.  The  word  in  this  sense  Todd  says  was  a 
favorite  in  Cromwell's  time."  A  surprising  note  !  In 
come  here  means  nothing  more  than  "  onfall,"  as  the  con 
text  shows. 

"  To  put  the  best  in  ure."    (II.  xvii.  545.) 

"  Ure  —  use.  Skinner  thinks  it  a  contraction  of  usura. 
It  is  frequent  in  Chaucer.  Todd  gives  examples  from 
Hooker  and  L'Estrange."  The  word  is  common  enough, 
but  how  Mr.  Hooper  could  seriously  quote  good  old 
Skinner  for  such  an  etymology  we  cannot  conceive.  It 
does  not  mean  "  in  use,"  but  "  to  work,"  being  merely 
the  English  form  of  en  oeuvre,  as  "  manure "  is  of  ma- 
naeuvrer. 

"  So  troop-meal  Troy  pursued  a  while."  (II.  xvii.  634.) 
"  Troop-meal  —  in  troops,  troop  by  troop.  So  piece 
meal.  To  meal  was  to  mingle,  mix  together ;  from  the 
French  meler.  ....  The  reader  would  do  well  to  con 
sult  Dr.  Jamieson's  excellent  '  Dictionary  of  the  Scottish 
Language '  in  voce  '  mell.'  "  No  doubt  the  reader  might 
profit  by  consulting  it  under  any  other  word  beginning 
with  M,  and  any  of  them  would  be  as  much  to  the  pur 
pose  as  mell.  Troop-meal,  like  inch-meal,  piece-meal,  im 
plies  separation,  not  mingling,  and  is  from  a  Teutonic 
root.  Mr.  Hooper  is  always  weak  in  his  linguistic. 
In  a  note  on  II.  xviii.  144,  he  informs  us  that  "To  sterve 
is  to  die ;  and  the  sense  of  starve,  with  cold  or  hunger 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  335 

originated  in  the  17th  century."  We  would  it  had! 
But  we  suspect  that  men  had  died  of  both  these  diseases 
earlier.  What  he  should  have  said  was  that  the  restric 
tion  of  meaning  to  dying  with  hunger  was  modern. 

II.  xx.  239  we  have  "  the  God's  "  for  "  the  Gods'  "  and 
a  few  lines  below  "  Anchisiades'  "  for  "  Anchisiades's  "  ; 
II.  xxi.  407,  "press'd"  for  "prest." 

We  had  noted  a  considerable  number  of  other  slips, 
but  we  will  mention  only  two  more.  "  Treen  broches" 
is  explained  to  mean  "branches  of  trees."  (Hymn  to 
Hermes,  227.)  It  means  "  wooden  spits."  In  the 
Bacchus  (28,  29)  Mr.  Hooper  restores  a  corrupt  reading 
which  Mr.  Singer  (for  a  wonder)  had  set  right.  He 

prints,  — 

"  Nay,  which  of  all  the  Pow'r  fully-divined 
Esteem  ye  him?  " 

Of  course  it  should  be  powerfully-divined,  for  otherwise 
we  must  read  "  Pow'rs."  The  five  volumes  need  a  very 
careful  revision  in  their  punctuation,  and  in  another  edi 
tion  we  should  advise  Mr.  Hooper  to  strike  out  every 
note  in  which  he  has  been  tempted  into  etymology. 

We  come  next  to  Mr.  W.  C.  Hazlitt's  edition  of  Love 
lace.  Three  short  pieces  of  Lovelace's  have  lived,  and 
deserved  to  live  :  "  To  Lucasta  from  Prison,"  "  To  Lu- 
casta  on  going  to  the  Wars,"  and  "  The  Grasshopper." 
They  are  graceful,  airy,  and  nicely  finished.  The  last 
especially  is  a  charming  poem,  delicate  in  expression, 
and  full  of  quaint  fancy,  which  only  in  the  latter  half  is 
strained  to  conceit.  As  the  verses  of  a  gentleman  they 
are  among  the  best,  though  not  of  a  very  high  order  as 
poetry.  He  is  to  be  classed  with  the  lucky  authors  who, 
without  great  powers,  have  written  one  or  two  pieces  so 
facile  in  thought  and  fortunate  in  phrase  as  to  be  carried 
lightly  in  the  memory,  poems  in  which  analysis  finds  lit- 


33G  LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS. 

tie,  but  which  are  charming  in  their  frail  completeness. 
This  faculty  of  hitting  on  the  precise  lilt  of  thought  and 
measure  that  shall  catch  the  universal  ear  and  sing  them 
selves  in  everybody's  memory,  is  a  rare  gift.  We  have 
heard  many  ingenious  persons  try  to  explain  the  cling  of 
such  a  poem  as  "  The  Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore,"  and 
the  result  of  all  seemed  to  be,  that  there  were  certain 
verses  that  were  good,  not  because  of  their  goodness,  but 
because  one  could  not  forget  them.  They  have  the 
great  merit  of  being  portable,  and  we  have  to  carry  so 
much  luggage  through  life,  that  we  should  be  thankful 
for  what  will  pack  easily  and  take  iip  no  room. 

All  that  Lovelace  wrote  beside  these  three  poems  is 
utterly  worthless,  mere  chaff  from  the  threshing  of  his 
wits.  Take  out  the  four  pages  on  which  they  are 
printed,  and  we  have  two  hundred  and  eighty -nine  left 
of  the  sorriest  stuff  that  ever  spoiled  paper.  The  poems 
are  obscure,  without  anything  in  them  to  reward  perse 
verance,  dull  without  being  moral,  and  full  of  conceits  so 
far-fetched  that  we  could  wish  the  author  no  worse  fate 
than  to  carry  them  back  to  where  they  came  from.  We 
are  no  enemies  to  what  are  commonly  called  conceits, 
but  authors  bear  them,  as  heralds  say,  with  a  difference. 
And  a  terrible  difference  it  is  !  With  men  like  Earle, 
Donne,  Fuller,  Butler,  Marvell,  and  even  Quarles,  con 
ceit  means  wit ;  they  would  carve  the  merest  cherry 
stone  of  thought  in  the  quaintest  and  delicatest  fashion. 
But  with  duller  and  more  painful  writers,  such  as  Gas- 
coyne,  Marston,  Felltham,  and  a  score  of  others,  even 
with  cleverer  ones  like  Waller,  Crashawe,  and  Suckling, 
•where  they  insisted  on  being  fine,  their  wit  is  conceit. 
Difficulty  without  success  is  perhaps  the  least  tolerable 
kind  of  writing.  Mere  stupidity  is  a  natural  failing ; 
we  skip  and  pardon.  But  the  other  is  Dulness  in  a 
domino,  that  travesties  its  familiar  figure,  and  lures  us 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  337 

only  to  disappoint.  These  unhappy  verses  of  Lovelace's 
had  been  dead  and  lapt  in  congenial  lead  these  two  hun 
dred  years ;  —  what  harm  had  they  done  Mr.  Hazlitt  that 
he  should  disinter  them  ?  There  is  no  such  disenchant- 
er  of  peaceable  reputations  as  one  of  these  resurrection- 
men  of  literature,  who  will  not  let  mediocrities  rest  in 
the  grave,  where  the  kind  sexton,  Oblivion,  had  buried 
them,  but  dig  them  up  to  make  a  profit  on  their  lead. 

Of  all  Mr.  Smith's  editors,  Mr.  W.  Carew  Hazlitt 
is  the  worst.  He  is  at  times  positively  incredible, 
worse  even  than  Mr.  Halliwell,  and  that  is  saying  a 
good  deal.  Worthless  as  Lovelace's  poems  were,  they 
should  have  been  edited  correctly,  if  edited  at  all.  Even 
dulness  and  dirtiness  have  a  right  to  fair  play,  and  to 
be  dull  and  dirty  in  their  own  way.  Mr.  Hazlitt  has 
allowed  all  the  misprints  of  the  original  (or  by  far  the 
greater  part  of  them)  to  stand,  but  he  has  ventured  on 
many  emendations  of  the  text,  and  in  every  important 
instance  has  blundered,  and  that,  too,  even  where  the 
habitual  practice  of  his  author  in  the  use  of  words  might 
have  led  him  right.  The  misapprehension  shown  in  some 
of  his  notes  is  beyond  the  belief  of  any  not  familiar 
with  the  way  in  which  old  books  are  edited  in  Eng 
land  by  the  job.  We  have  brought  a  heavy  indictment, 
and  we  proceed  to  our  proof,  choosing  only  cases  where 
there  can  be  no  dispute.  We  should  premise  that  Mr. 
Hazlitt  professes  to  have  corrected  the  punctuation. 

"  And  though  he  sees  it  full  of  wounds, 
Cruel  one,  still  he  wounds  it.       (p.  34.) 

Here  the  original  reads,  "  Cruel  still  on,"  and  the  only 
correction  needed  was  a  comma  after  "  cruel." 

"  And  by  the  glorions  light 
Of  both  those  stars,  which  of  their  spheres  bereft, 
Only  the  jelly  's  left."    (p.  41.) 

The  original  has  "of  which,"  and  rightly,  for  "their 
15  v 


338  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

spheres  bereft "  is  parenthetic,  and  the  sense  is  "  of 
which  only  the  jelly  's  left."  Lovelace  is  speaking  of  the 
eyes  of  a  mistress  who  has  grown  old,  and  his  image,  con 
fused  as  it  is,  is  based  on  the  belief  that  stars  shooting 
from  their  spheres  fell  to  the  earth  as  jellies,  —  a  belief, 
by  the  way,  still  to  be  met  with  in  New  England. 

Lovelace,  describing  a  cow  (and  it  is  one  of  the  few 
pretty  passages  in  the  volume),  says,  — 

"  She  was  the  largest,  goodliest  beast 
That  ever  mead  or  altar  blest, 
Round  as  her  udder,  and  more  white 
Than  is  the  Milky-Way  in  night."     (p.  64.) 

Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  to  "  Hound  was  her  udder,"  thus 
making  that  white  instead  of  the  cow,  as  Lovelace  in 
tended.  On  the  next  page  we  read,  — 

"  She  takes  her  leave  o'  th'  mournful  neat, 
Who,  by  her  toucht,  now  prizeth  her  Ufa, 
Worthy  alone  the  hollowed  knife." 

Compare  Chapman  (Iliads,  xviii.  480)  :  — 

"  Slew  all  their  white  fleec'd  sheep  and  neat." 

The  original  was  "  prize  their  life,"  and  the  use  of 
"  neat "  as  a  singular  in  this  way  is  so  uncommon,  if 
not  unprecedented,  and  the  verse  as  corrected  so  halt 
ing,  that  we  have  no  doubt  Lovelace  so  wrote  it.  Of 
course  "  hollowed "  should  be  "  hallowed,"  though  the 
broader  pronunciation  still  lingers  in  our  country  pul 
pits. 

"  What  need  she  other  bait  or  charm 
But  look  V  or  angle  but  her  arm?  "    (p.  65.) 

So  the  original,  which  Mr.  Hazlitt,  missing  the  sense, 
has  changed  to  "  what  hook  or  angle." 

"  Fly  Joy  on  wings  of  Popinjays 
To  courts  of  fools  where  as  your  plays 
Die  laught  at  and  forgot."    (p.  67.) 

The  original  has  "  there."     Read,  — 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  339 

"  Fly,  Joy,  on  wings  of  popinjays 
To  courts  of  fools ;  there,  as  your  plays, 
Die,"  &c. 

"Where  as,"  as  then  used,  would  make  it  the  "plays" 
that  were  to  die. 

"  As  he  Lucasta  nam'd,  a  groan 
Strangles  the  fainting  passing  tone; 
But  as  she  heard,  Lucasta  smiles, 
Posses  her  round;  she's  slipt  meanwhiles 
Behind  the  blind  of  a  thick  bush."   (p.  68.) 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  note  on  "  posses  "  could  hardly  be  matched 
by  any  member  of  the  posse  comitatus  taken  at  ran 
dom  :  — 

''  This  word  does  not  appear  to  have  any  very  exact 
meaning.  See  Halliwell's  Dictionary  of  Archaic  Words,  art. 
Posse,  and  Worcester's  Diet,  ibid.,  &c.  The  context  here 
requires  to  turn  sharply  or  quickly." 

The  "ibid.,  &c."  is  delightful;  in  other  words,  "find 
out  the  meaning  of  posse  for  yourself."  Though  dark  to 
Mr.  Hazlitt,  the  word  has  not  the  least  obscurity  in  it. 
It  is  only  another  form  of  push,  nearer  the  French 
pousser,  from  Latin  pulsare,  and  "  the  context  here  re 
quires  "  nothing  more  than  that  an  editor  should  read  a 
poem  if  he  wish  to  understand  it.  The  plain  meaning 

is,— 

"  But,  as  she  heard  Lucasta,  smiles 
Possess  her  round." 

That  is,  when  she  heard  the  name  Lucasta,  —  for  thus 
far  in  the  poem  she  has  passed  under  the  pseudonyme 
of  Amarantha.  "  Possess  her  round  "  is  awkward,  but 
mildly  so  for  Lovelace,  who  also  spells  "  commandress  " 
in  the  same  way  with  a  single  s.  Process  is  spelt  grosses 
in  the  report  of  those  who  absented  themselves  from 
Church,  in  Stratford. 

"  0  thon,  that  swing'st  upon  the  waving  eare, 
Of  some  well-filled  oaten  beard."   (p.  94.) 


340  LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS. 

Mr.  Hazlitt,  for  some  inscrutable  reason,  has  changed 
"haire"  to  "eare"  in  the  first  Hue,  preferring  the  ear 
of  a  beard  to  its  hair  ! 
Mr.  Hazlitt  prints,  — 

"  Poor  verdant  foole !  and  now  green  ice,  thy  joys 
Large  and  as  lasting  as  thy  pelrcli  of  grass, 
Bid  us  lay  in  'gainst  winter  raine  and  poize 
Their  flouds  with  an  o'erflowiug  glasse."  (p.  95.) 

Surely  we  should  read  :  — 

"  Poor  verdant  foole  and  now  green  ice,  thy  joys, 
Large  and  as  lasting  as  thy  perch  of  grass, 
Bid,"  &c. 

i.  e.  "  Poor  fool  now  frozen,  the  shortness  of  thy  joys, 
who  mad'st  no  provision  against  winter,  warns  us  to  do 
otherwise." 

"  The  radiant  gemme  was  brightly  set 
In  as  divine  a  carkanet; 
Of  which  the  clearer  was  not  knowne 
Her  minde  or  her  complexion."  (p.  101.) 

The  original  reads  rightly  "  for  which,"  &c.,  and,  the 
passage  being  rightly  pointed,  we  have,  — 

"  For  which  the  clearer  was  not  known, 
Her  mind  or  her  complexion." 

Of  course  "  complexion "  had  not  its  present  limited 

meaning. 

" .  .  .  .  my  future  daring  bayes 
Shall  bow  itself."    (p.  107.) 

"  We  should  read  themselves,"  says  Mr.  Hazlitt's  note 
authoritatively.  Of  course  a  noun  ending  in  s  is  plural  ! 
Not  so  fast.  In  spite  of  the  dictionaries,  bays  was  often 
used  in  the  singular. 

"  Do  plant  a  sprig  of  cypress,  not  of  bays," 
says  Robert  Randolph  in  verses  prefixed  to  his  brother's 
poems  ;  and  Felltham  in  "  Jonsonus  Virbius," 

"  A  greener  bays  shall  crown  Ben  Jonson's  name." 
But  we  will  cite  Mr.  Bayes  himself :  — 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  341 

"  And,  where  he  took  it  up,  resigns  the  bays.1' 

"  But  we  (defend  us!)  are  divine, 

[Not]  female,  but  madam  born,  and  come 
From  a  right-honorable  wombe."     (p.  115.) 

Here  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  ruined  both  sense  and  metre  by 
his  unhappy  "  not."  We  should  read  "  Female,  but 
madam-born,"  meaning  clearly  enough  "  we  are  women, 
it  is  true,  but  of  another  race." 

"  In  every  hand  [let]  a  cup  be  found 
That  from  all  hearts  a  health  may  sound."     (p.  121.) 

Wrong  again,  and  the  inserted  "let"  ruinous  to  the  meas 
ure.  Is  it  possible  that  Mr.  Hazlitt  does  not  understand 
so  common  an  English  construction  as  this  ] 

"  First  told  thee  into  th'  ayre,  then  to  the  ground."    (p.  141.) 

Mr.  Hazlitt  inserts  the  "  to,"  which  is  not  in  the  original, 
from  another  version.  Lovelace  wrote  "ayer."  We 
have  noted  two  other  cases  (pp.  203  and  248)  where  he 
makes  the  word  a  dissyllable.  On  the  same  page  we 
have  "  shewe's  "  changed  to  "  shew  "  because  Mr.  Hazlitt 
did  not  know  it  meant  "  show  us  "  and  not  "  shows."  On 
page  170,  "  their"  is  substituted  for  "her,"  which  re 
fers  to  Lucasta,  and  could  refer  to  nothing  else. 

Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  "  quarrels  the  student  Mercury  " 
to  "  quarrels  with,"  not  knowing  that  quarrels  was  once 
used  as  a  transitive  verb.  (p.  189.) 

Wherever  he  chances  to  notice  it,  Mr.  Hazlitt  changes 
the  verb  following  two  or  more  nouns  connected  by  an 
"  and  "  from  singular  to  plural.  For  instance  :  — 

"  You,  sir,  alone,  fame,  and  all  conquering  rhyme 
File  the  set  teeth,"  &c.    (p.  224.) 

for  "files."  Lovelace  commonly  writes  so  ;  —  on  p.  181, 
where  it  escaped  Mr.  Hazlitt's  grammatical  eye,  we 
find,  — 

"  But  broken  faith,  and  th'  cause  of  it, 
All  damning  gold,  iaas  damned  to  the  pit." 


342  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

Indeed,  it  was  usual  with  writers  of  that  day.  Milton 
in  one  of  his  sonnets  has,  — 

"Thy  worth  and  skill  exempts  thee  from  the  throng,"  — 
and  Leigh  Hunt,  for  the  sake  of  the  archaism,  in  one  of 
his,  "  Patience  and  Gentleness  is  power." 

Weariness,  and  not  want  of  matter,  compels  us  to 
desist  from  further  examples  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's  emenda 
tions.  But  we  must  also  give  a  few  specimens  of  Ms 
notes,  and  of  the  care  with  which  he  has  corrected  the 
punctuation. 

In  a  note  on  "  flutes  of  canary  "  (p.  76)  too  long  to 
quote,  Mr.  Hazlitt,  after  citing  the  glossary  of  Nares 
(edition  of  1859,  by  Wright  and  Halliwell,  a  very  care 
less  book,  to  speak  mildly),  in  which  flute  is  conjectured 
to  mean  cask,  says  that  he  is  not  satisfied,  but  adds, 
"  I  suspect  that  a  flute  of  canary  was  so  called  from 
the  cask  having  several  vent-holes."  But  flute  means 
simply  a  tall  glass.  Lassel,  describing  the  glass-making 
at  Murano,  says,  "  For  the  High  Dutch  they  have  high 
glasses  called  Flutes,  a  full  yard  long."  So  in  Dryden's 
Sir  Martin  Mar-all,  "  bring  two  flute-glasses  and  some 
stools,  ho  !  We  '11  have  the  ladies'  health."  The  origin 
of  the  word,  though  doubtful,  is  probably  nearer  to  flood 
than  flute.  But  conceive  of  two  gentlemen,  members  of 
one  knows  not  how  many  learned  societies,  like  Messrs. 
Wright  and  Halliwell,  pretending  to  edit  Nares,  when 
they  query  a  word  which  they  could  have  found  in  any 
French  or  German  dictionary  ! 

On  page  93  we  have,  — 

"  Hayle,  holy  cold!  chaste  temper,  hayle!  the  fire 
Raved  o'er  my  purer  thoughts  I  feel  t'  expire." 

Mr.  Hazlitt  annotates  thus :  "  Ratfd  seems  here  to  be 
equivalent  to  reav'd  or  bereavd.  Perhaps  the  correct 
reading  may  be  'reav'd.'  See  Worcester's  Dictionary, 
art.  RAVE,  where  Menage's  supposition  of  affinity  be- 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  343 

tween  rave  and  bereave  is  perhaps  a  little  too  slightingly 
treated." 

The  meaning  of  Lovelace  was,  "the  fire  that  raved." 
But  what  Mr.  Hazlitt  would  make  with  "  reaved  o'er  my 
purer  thoughts,"  we  cannot  conceive.  On  the  whole,  we 
think  he  must  have  written  the  note  merely  to  make  his 
surprising  glossological  suggestion.  All  that  Worcester 
does  for  the  etymology,  by  the  way,  is  to  cite  Richard 
son,  no  safe  guide. 

"  Where  now  one  so  so  spatters,  t'other:  no!"    (p.  112.) 

The  comma  in  this  verse  has,  of  course,  no  right  there, 
but  Mr.  Hazlitt  leaves  the  whole  passage  so  corrupt  that 
we  cannot  spend  time  in  disinfecting  it.  We  quote  it 
only  for  the  sake  of  his  note  on  "  so  so."  It  is  marvel 
lous. 

"  An  exclamation  of  approval  when  an  actor  made  a  hit. 
The  corruption  seems  to  be  somewhat  akin  to  the  Italian,  '  si, 
si,:  a  corruption  of  '  sia,  sia.'  " 

That  the  editor  of  an  English  poet  need  not  under 
stand  Italian  we  may  grant,  but  that  he  should  not 
know  the  meaning  of  a  phrase  so  common  in  his  own 
language  as  so-so  is  intolerable.  Lovelace  has  been  say 
ing  that  a  certain  play  might  have  gained  applause  un 
der  certain  circumstances,  but  that  everybody  calls  it 
so-so,  —  something  very  different  from  "  an  exclamation 
of  approval,"  one  should  say.  The  phrase  answers 
exactly  to  the  Italian  cosl  cosl,  while  si  (not  si)  is  derived 
from  sic,  and  is  analogous  with  the  affirmative  use  of  the 
German  so  and  the  Yankee  jes'  so. 

"  Oh,  how  he  hastened  death,  burnt  to  be  fryecl!  "    (p.  141.) 
The  note  on  fryed  is,  — 

"  I.  e.  freed.  Free  and  freed  were  sometimes  pronounced 
like/?-?/  and.  fryed ;  for  Lord  North,  in  his  Forest  of  Varieties, 
1G45,  has  these  lines : — 


344  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

'  Birds  that  long  have  lived  free, 
Caught  and  cag'd,  but  pine  and  die.' 

Here  evidently  free,  is  intended  to  rhyme  with  die." 

"Evidently!"  An  instance  of  the  unsafeness  of 
rhyme  as  a  guide  to  pronunciation.  It  was  die  that  had 
the  sound  of  dee,  as  everybody  (but  Mr.  Hazlitt)  knows. 
Lovelace  himself  rhymes  die  and  site  on  p.  2G9.  But 
what  shall  we  say  to  our  editor's  not  knowing  that/ry 
was  used  formerly  where  we  should  say  burn  ?  Lovers 
used  to  fry  with  love,  whereas  now  they  have  got  out  of 
the  frying-pan  into  the  fire.  In  this  case  a  martyr  is 
represented  as  burning  (i.  e.  longing)  to  be  fried  (i.  e. 
burned). 

"  Her  beams  ne'er  shed  or  change  like  th'  hair  of  day."    (p.  224.) 
Mr.  Hazlitt's  note  is,  — 

"  Hair  is  here  used  in  what  has  become  quite  an  obsolete 
sense.  The  meaning  is  outward  form,  nature,  or  character. 
The  word  used  to  be  by  no  means  uncommon ;  but  it  is  now, 
as  was  before  remarked,  out  of  fashion  ;  and  indeed  I  do  not 
think  that  it  is  found  even  in  any  old  writer  used  exactly  in 
the  way  in  which  Lovelace  has  employed  it" 

We  should  think  not,  as  Mr.  Hazlitt  understands  it  ! 
Did  he  never  hear  of  the  golden  hair  of  Apollo,  —  of  the 
intonsum  Cynthium  ?  Don  Quixote  was  a  better  scholar 
where  he  speaks  of  las  doradas  hebras  de  sus  hermosos 
cabellos.  But  hair  never  meant  what  Mr.  Hazlitt  says  it 
does,  even  when  used  as  he  supposes  it  to  be  here.  It 
had  nothing  to  do  with  "  outward  form,  nature,  or 
character,"  but  had  a  meaning  much  nearer  what  we 
express  by  temperament,  which  its  color  was  and  is 
thought  to  indicate. 

On  p.  232  "wild  ink"  is  explained  to  mean  "unre 
fined."  It  is  a  mere  misprint  for  "  vttd." 

Page  237,  Mr.  Hazlitt,  explaining  an  illusion  of  Love 
lace  to  the  "east  and  west"  hi  speaking  of  George 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  345 

Sandys,  mentions  Sandys's  Oriental  travels,  but  seems 
not  to  know  that  he  translated  Ovid  in  Virginia. 
Pages  251,  252  :- 

"  And  as  that  soldier  conquest  doubted  not, 
Who  but  one  splinter  had  of  Castriot, 
But  would  assault  ev'n  death,  so  strongly  charmed, 
And  naked  oppose  rocks,  with  this  bone  armed." 

Mr.  Hazlitt  reads  his  for  this  in  the  last  verse,  and  his 
note  on  "  bone  "  is  :  — 

"  And  he  found  a  new  jawbone  of  an  ass,  and  put  forth 
his  hand  and  took  it, -and  slew  a  thousand  men  therewith. 
(Judges  xv.  15.)  " 

Could  the  farce  of  "  editing  "  go  further  ]  To  make  a 
"  splinter  of  Castriot "  an  ass's  jawbone  is  a  little  too 
bad.  We  refer  Mr.  Hazlitt  to  "  The  Life  of  George  Cas 
triot,  King  of  Epirus  and  Albania,"  &c.,  &c.,  (Edinburgh, 
1753,)  p.  32,  for  an  explanation  of  this  profound  diffi 
culty.  He  will  there  find  that  the  Turkish  soldiers  wore 
relics  of  Scanderbeg  as  charms. 

Perhaps  Mr.  Hazlitt's  most  astounding  note  is  on  the 
word  pickear.  (p.  203.) 

"  So  within  shot  she  doth  pickear, 
Now  gall's  [galls]  the  flank  and  now  the  rear." 

"  In  the  sense  in  which  it  is  here  used  this  word  seems  to 
be  peculiar  to  Lovelace.  To  pickear,  or  pickeer,  means  to 
skirmish."  And,  pray,  what  other  possible  meaning  can 
it  have  here  ] 

Of  his  corrections  of  the  press  we  will  correct  a  few 
samples. 

Page  34,  for  "  Love  nee're  his  standard,"  read  "neere." 
Page  82,  for  "  fall  too,"  read  "  fall  to  "  (or,  as  we  ought  to 
print  such  words,  "fall-to")/  Page  83,  for  "star-made 
firmament,"  read  "star,  made  firmament."  Page  161, 
for  "  To  look  their  enemies  in  their  hearse,"  read,  both 
for  sense  and  metre,  into.  Page  176,  for  "the  gods  have 
15* 


346  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

kneeled,"  read  had.  Page  182,  for  "In  beds  they  tum 
bled  off  their  own,"  read  of.  Page  184,  for  "  in  mine 
one  monument  I  lie,"  read  owne.  Page  212,  for  "Deu 
calion's  WocMung  stone,"  read  "  backflung."  Of  the 
punctuation  we  shall  give  but  one  specimen,  and  that  a 
fair  average  one  :  — 

"  Xaso  to  his  Tibullus  flung  the  wreath, 
He  to  Catullus  thus  did  each  bequeath. 
This  glorious  circle,  to  another  round, 
At  last  the  temples  of  a  god  it  bound." 

Our  readers  over  ten  years  of  age  will  easily  correct  this 
for  themselves. 

Time  brings  to  obscure  authors*  an  odd  kind  of  repa 
ration,  an  immortality,  not  of  love  and  interest  and  ad 
miration,  but  of  curiosity  merely.  In  proportion  as 
their  language  was  uncouth,  provincial,  or  even  barba 
rous,  their  value  becomes  the  greater.  A  book  of  which 
only  a  single  copy  escaped  its  natural  enemies,  the  pas 
try-cook  and  trunk-maker,  may  contain  one  word  that 
makes  daylight  in  some  dark  passage  of  a  great  author, 
and  its  name  shall  accordingly  live  forever  in  a  note.  Is 
not,  then,  a  scholiastic  athanasy  better  than  none  1  And 
if  literary  vanity  survive  death,  or  even  worse,  as  Bru- 
netto  Latini's  made  him  insensible  for  a  moment  to  the 
rain  of  fire  and  the  buniing  sand,  the  authors  of  such 
books  as  are  not  properly  literature  may  still  comfort 
themselves  with  a  non  omnis  moriar,  laying  a  mournful 
emphasis  on  the  adjectiye,  and  feeling  that  they  have 
not  lived  wholly  in  vain  while  they  share  with  the  dodo 
a  fragmentary  continuance  on  earth.  To  be  sure,  the 
immortality,  such  as  it  is.  belongs  less  to  themselves 
than  to  the  famous  men  they  help  to  illustrate.  If  they 
escape  oblivion,  it  is  by  a  back  door,  as  it  were,  and  they 

»  Early  Popular  Poetry.     Edited  by  W.  Carew  Hazlitt. 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS.  347 

survive  only  in  fine  print  at  the  page's  foot.  At  the 
banquet  of  fame  they  sit  below  the  salt.  After  all,  per 
haps,  the  next  best  thing  to  being  famous  or  infamous 
is  to  be  utterly  forgotten,  for  this  also  is  to  achieve  a 
kind  of  definite  result  by  living.  To  hang  on  the  peril 
ous  edge  of  immortality  by  the  nails,  liable  at  any  mo 
ment  to  drop  into  the  fathomless  ooze  of  oblivion,  is  at 
best  a  questionable  beatitude.  And  yet  sometimes  the 
merest  barnacles  that  have  attached  themselves  to  the 
stately  keels  of  Dante  or  Shakespeare  or  Milton  have 
an  interest  of  their  own  by  letting  us  know  in  what  re 
mote  waters  those  hardy  navigators  went  a  pearl-fishing. 
Has  not  Mr.  Dyce  traced  Shakespeare's  "  dusty  death  " 
to  Anthony  Copley,  and  Milton's  "back  resounded 
Death  ! "  to  Abraham  Fraunce  1  Nay,  is  it  not  Bernard 
de  Ventadour's  lark  that  sings  forever  in  the  diviner  air 
of  Dante's  Paradise  1 

"  Quan  vey  laudeta  mover 

De  joi  sas  alas  contra'l  rai, 

Que  s'oblida  e  s  laissa  cazer 

Per  la  doussor  qu  'al  cor  li  'n  vai." 
"  Qual  lodoletta  che  in  aere  si  spazia, 

Prima  cantando,  e  poi  tace  contents 

Dell'  ultima  dolcezza  che  la  sazia." 

We  are  not  sure  that  Bernard's  "  Que  s'oblida  e  s 
laissa  cazer  "  is  not  sweeter  than  Dante's  "  tace  conten- 
ta,"  but  it  was  plainly  the  doussor  that  gave  its  cue  to 
the  greater  poet's  memory,  and  he  has  improved  on  it 
with  that  exquisite  ultima,  as  his  master  Virgil  some 
times  did  on  Homer. 

But  authors  whose  interest  for  us  is  mainly  biblio 
graphic  belong  rather  in  such  collections  as  Mr.  Alli- 
bone's.  As  literature  they  are  oppressive  ;  as  items  of 
literary  history  they  find  their  place  in  that  vast  list 
which  records  not  only  those  named  for  promotion,  but 
also  the  killed,  wounded,  and  missing  in  the  Battle  of 


348  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

the  Books.  There  our  hearts  are  touched  with  some 
thing  of  the  same  vague  pathos  that  dims  the  eye  in 
some  deserted  graveyard.  The  brief  span  of  our  earthly 
immortalities  is  brought  home  to  us  as  nowhere  else. 
What  a  necrology  of  notability  !  How  many  a  contro- 
vei-sialist,  terrible  in  his  day,  how  many  a  rising  genius 
that  somehow  stuck  on  the  horizon,  how  many  a  wither 
ing  satirist,  lies  here  shrunk  all  away  to  the  tombstone 
brevity  of  a  name  and  date  !  Think  of  the  aspirations, 
the  dreams,  the  hopes,  the  toil,  the  confidence  (of  him 
self  and  wife)  in  an  impai*tial  and  generous  posterity,  — 
and  then  read  "Smith  J.  [ohn1?]  1713-1784  (?).  The 
Vision  of  Immortality,  an  Epique  Poem  in  twelve  books, 
1740,  4to.  See  Lowndes"  The  time  of  his  own  death 
less  certain  than  that  of  his  poem,  (which  we  may  fix 
pretty  safely  in  1740,)  and  the  only  posterity  that  took 
any  interest  in  him  the  indefatigable  compiler  to  whom 
a  name  was  valuable  in  proportion  as  it  was  obscure. 
"\Vcll,  to  have  even  so  much  as  your  title-page  read  after 
it  has  rounded  the  corner  of  its  first  century,  and  to 
enjoy  a  posthumous  public  of  one  is  better  than  nothing. 
This  is  the  true  Valhalla  of  Mediocrity,  the  Libro  d'oro 
of  the  onymi-anonymi,  of  the  never-named  authors  who 
exist  only  in  name.  Parson  Adams  would  be  here  had 
he  found  a  printer  for  his  sermons,  and  Mr.  Primrose, 
if  a  copy  existed  of  his  tracts  on  monogamy.  Papyror- 
cetes  junior  will  turn  here  with  justifiable  pride  to  the 
name  of  his  respectable  progenitor.  Here  we  are  secure 
of  perpetuity  at  least,  if  of  nothing  better,  and  are 
sons  though  we  may  not  be  heirs,  of  fame.  Here  is  a 
handy  and  inexpensive  substitute  for  the  waxen  imagines 
of  the  Roman  patriciate,  for  those  must  have  been  in 
convenient  to  pack  on  a  change  of  lodgings,  liable  to 
melt  in  warm  weather  (even  the  elder  Brutus  himself 
might  soften  in  the  dog-days)  and  not  readily  salable 


LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS.  349 

unless  to  some  novus  homo  willing  to  buy  a  set  of  ances 
tors  ready-made,  as  some  of  our  own  enthusiasts  in  gene 
alogy  are  said  to  order  a  family-tree  from  the  heraldic 
nurseryman,  skilled  to  imp  a  slip  of  Scroggins  on  a 
stock  of  De  Vere  or  Montmorenci.  Fame,  it  should 
seem,  like  electricity,  is  both  positive  and  negative,  and 
if  a  writer  must  be  Somebody  to  make  himself  of  perma 
nent  interest  to  the  world  at  large,  he  must  not  less  be 
Nobody  to  have  his  namelessness  embalmed  by  M.  Gue- 
rard.  The  benignity  of  Providence  is  nowhere  more 
clearly  to  be  seen  than  in  its  compensations.  As  there 
is  a  large  class  of  men  madly  desirous  to  decipher  cunei 
form  and  other  inscriptions,  simply  because  of  their  il 
legibility,  so  there  is  another  class  driven  by  a  like  irre 
sistible  instinct  to  the  reprinting  of  unreadable  books. 
Whether  these  have  even  a  philologic  value  for  us  de 
pends  on  the  accuracy  and  learning  bestowed  upon  them 
by  the  editor. 

For  there  is  scarcely  any  rubbish-heap  of  literature  out 
of  which  something  precious  may  not  be  raked  by  the 
diligent  explorer,  and  the  late  Mr.  Dyce  (since  Gifford, 
the  best  editor  of  our  literature  of  the  Tudor  and  Jaco 
bean  periods)  might  well  be  called  the  Golden  Dustman, 
so  many  were  the  precious  trifles  sifted  out  by  his  intel 
ligent  industry.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  name  any 
work  more  thoroughly  done  than  his  edition  of  Skelton. 
He  was  not  a  philologist  in  the  stricter  sense,  but  no 
man  had  such  a  commonplace-book  as  he,  or  knew  so  ex 
actly  the  meaning  with  which  words  were  used  during 
the  period  he  did  so  much  to  illustrate.  Elegant  scholar 
ship  is  not  often,  as  in  him,  patient  of  drudgery  and 
conscientious  in  painstaking.  Between  such  a  man  and 
Mr.  Carew  Hazlitt  the  contrast  is  by  no  means  agreeable. 
The  one  was  not  more  distinguished  by  modest  accuracy 
than  the  other  is  by  the  rash  conceit  of  that  half-knowl- 


350  LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS. 

edge  which  is  more  mischievous  in  an  editor  than  down 
right  ignorance.  This  language  is  strong  because  it  is 
true,  though  we  should  not  have  felt  called  upon  to  use 
it  but  for  the  vulgar  flippancy  with  which  Mr.  Hazlitt 
alludes  depreciatingly  to  the  labors  of  his  predecessors, 
—  to  such  men  as  Ritson,  Utterson,  Wright,  and  Sir 
Frederick  Madden,  his  superiors  in  everything  that  goes 
to  the  making  of  a  good  editor.  Most  of  them  are  now 
dead  and  nailed  in  their  chests,  and  it  is  not  for  us  to 
forget  the  great  debt  we  owe  to  them,  and  others  like 
them,  who  first  opened  paths  for  us  through  the  tangled 
wilderness  of  our  early  literature.  A  modern  editor, 
with  his  ready-made  helps  of  glossary,  annotation,  and 
comment,  should  think  rather  of  the  difficulties  than 
the  defects  of  these  pioneers. 

How  different  is  Mr.  Hazlitt's  spirit  from  that  of  the 
thorough  and  therefore  modest  scholar !  In  the  Preface 
to  his  Altengluche  Sprachproben,  Matzner  says  of  an 
editor,  das  Beste  was  er  ist  verdankt  er  Andern,  an  acci 
dental  pentameter  that  might  seem  to  have  dropped  out 
of  Nathan  der  Weise.  Mr.  Hazlitt  would  profit  much  by 
getting  some  friend  to  translate  for  him  the  whole  para 
graph  in  which  it  occurs. 

We  see  it  announced  that  Mr.  Hazlitt  is  to  superin 
tend  a  new  edition  of  Warton's  History  of  English 
Poetry,  and  are  pained  to  think  of  the  treatment  that 
robust  scholar  and  genial  poet  is  likely  to  receive  at 
the  hands  of  an  editor  without  taste,  discrimination,  or 
learning.  Of  his  taste  a  single  specimen  may  suffice. 
He  tells  us  that  "  in  an  artistic  and  constructive  point 
of  view,  the  Mylner  of  Abinyton  is  superior  to  its  prede 
cessor,"  that  predecessor  being  Chaucer's  Reve's  Tale, 
which,  with  his  usual  inaccuracy,  he  assigns  to  the 
Miller  !  Of  his  discrimination  we  have  a  sufficient  test 
in  the  verses  he  has  fathered  upon  Herrick  in  a  late 


LIBRARY    OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  351 

edition  of  the  most  graceful  of  our  lyric  poets.  Perhaps 
discrimination  is  not,  after  all,  the  right  word,  for  we 
have  sometimes  seen  cause  to  doubt  whether  Mr.  Hazlitt 
ever  reads  carefully  the  very  documents  he  prints.  For 
example,  in  the  Biographical  Notice  prefixed  to  the 
Herrick  he  says  (p.  xvii)  :  "  Mr.  W.  Perry  Herrick  has 
plausibly  suggested  that  the  payments  made  by  Sir 
William  to  his  nephew  were  simply  on  account  of  the 
fortune  which  belonged  to  Robert  in  right  of  his  father, 
and  which  his  uncle  held  in  trust ;  this  was  about  £  400  ; 
and  I  think  from  allusions  in  the  letters  printed  else 
where  that  this  view  may  be  the  correct  one."  May  be  ! 
The  poet  says  expressly,  "  I  entreat  you  out  of  my  little 
possession  to  deliver  to  this  bearer  the  customarye  £  10, 
without  which  I  cannot  meate  []]  my  ioymey."  The 
words  we  have  italicized  are  conclusive.  By  the  way, 
Mr.  Hazlitt's  wise-looking  query  after  "  meate  "  is  con 
clusive  also  as  to  his  fitness  for  editorship.  Did  he 
never  hear  of  the  familiar  phrase  "  to  meet  the  expense  "  1 
If  so  trifling  a  misspelling  can  mystify  him,  what  must 
be  the  condition  of  his  mind  in  face  of  the  more  than 
Protean  travesties  which  words  underwent  before  they 
were  uniformed  by  Johnson  and  Walker  1  Mr.  Hazlitt's 
mind,  to  be  sure,  like  the  wind  Cecias,  always  finds  its 
own  fog.  In  another  of  Herrick's  letters  we  find,  "  For 
what  her  monie  can  be  effected  (sic)  when  there  is  di- 
uision  'twixt  the  hart  and  hand1?"  "Her  monie"  of 
course  means  harmonie,  and  effected  is  therefore  right. 
What  Mr.  Hazlitt  may  have  meant  by  his  "  (sic) "  it 
were  idle  to  inquire. 

We  have  already  had  occasion  to  examine  some  of 
Mr.  Hazlitt's  work,  and  we  are  sorry  to  say  that  in  the 
four  volumes  before  us  we  find  110  reason  for  changing 
our  opinion  of  his  utter  disqualification  for  the  duties  of 
editorship.  He  seldom  clears  up  a  real  difficulty  (never, 


352  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

we  might  say,  with  lights  of  his  own),  he  frequently 
creates  a  dai'kness  where  none  was  before,  and  the  pecu 
liar  bumptiorisness  of  his  incapacity  makes  it  particularly 
offensive.  We  shall  bring  a  few  instances  in  proof  of 
what  we  assert,  our  only  embarrassment  being  in  the 
superabundance  of  our  material.  In  the  Introduction  to 
the  second  volume  of  his  collection,  Mr.  Hazlitt  speaks 
of  "  the  utter  want  of  common  care  on  the  part  of  pre 
vious  editors  of  our  old  poetry."  Such  oversights  as  he 
has  remarked  upon  in  his  notes  are  commonly  errors 
of  the  press,  a  point  on  which  Mr.  Hazlitt,  of  all  men, 
should  have  been  charitable,  for  his  own  volumes  are 
full  of  them.  We  call  his  attention  to  one  such  which 
is  rather  amusing.  In  his  "  additional  notes  "  we  find 
"  line  77,  wylle.  Strike  out  the  note  upon  this  word  ; 
but  the  explanation  is  correct.  Be  urroyht  was  a  mis 
print,  however,  for  ke  ivrog/it."  The  error  occurs  in  a 
citation  of  three  lines  in  which  lotlier  is  still  left  for 
tother.  The  original  note  affords  us  so  good  an  example 
of  Mr.  Hazlitt's  style  of  editing  as  to  be  worth  preserv 
ing.  In  the  "  Kyng  and  the  Hermit  "  we  read,  — 

"  He  ne  wyst  w[h]ere  that  he  was 
Ne  out  of  the  forest  for  to  passe, 
And  thus  he  rode  all  wylle." 

And  here  is  Mr.  Hazlitt's  annotation  on  the  word 
wylle :  — 

"  i.  f.  evil.  In  a  MS.  of  the  Tale  of  the  Basyn,  sup 
posed  by  Mr.  Wright,  who  edited  it  in  1836,  to  be  writ 
ten  in  the  Salopian  dialect,  are  the  following  lines  :  — 

'  The  lother  hade  litull  thoght. 
Off  husbandry  cowth  he  noght, 
But  alle  his  wyves  icillbe  wroght.'  "     (Vol.  I.  p.  16.) 

It  is  plain  that  he  supposed  will,  in  this  very  simple  pas 
sage,  to  mean  evil  f  This  he  would  seem  to  rectify,  but 
at  the  same  time  takes  care  to  tell  us  that  "  the  expla- 


• 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  353 

nation  [of  wylle~\  is  correct."  He  is  willing  to  give  up 
one  blunder,  if  only  he  may  have  one  left  to  comfort 
himself  withal !  Wylle  is  simply  a  rhyming  fetch  for 
ivild,  and  the  passage  means  that  the  king  rode  at  ran 
dom.  The  use  of  wild  with  this  meanino-  is  still  com- 

O 

mon  in  such  phrases  as  "  he  struck  wild."  In  "  Have- 
lok  "  we  find  it  in  the  nearly  related  sense  of  being  at  a 
loss,  Jcnoiving  not  what  to  do  :  — 

"  To  lincolne  barfot  he  yede 
Hwnn  lie  kam  ther  he  was  ful  toil, 
Ne  hauede  he  no  frend  to  gangen  til." 

All  ivylle,  in  short,  means  the  kind  of  editing  that  is 
likely  to  be  done  by  a  gentleman  who  picks  up  his  mis 
information  as  he  goes  along.  We  would  hint  that  a 
person  must  know  something  before  he  can  use  even  a 
glossary  with  safety. 

In  the  "  King  and  the  Barker,"  when  the  tanner  finds 
out  that  it  is  the  king  whom  he  has  been  treating  so 
familiarly,  and  falls  upon  his  knees,  Mr.  Hazlitt  prints, 

"  He  had  no  meynde  of  hes  hode,  nor  cape,  ne  radell," 
and  subjoins  the  following  note  :  "  Radell,  or  raddle, 
signifies  a  side  of  a  cart ;  but  here,  apparently,  stands 
for  the  cart  itself.  Ritson  printed  ner  adell."  Mr. 
Hazlitt's  explanation  of  raddle,  which  he  got  from  Halli- 
well,  is  incorrect.  The  word,  as  its  dei'ivation  (from  0. 
F.  rastel]  implies,  means  the  side  or  end  of  a  hay-curt,  in 
which  the  uprights  are  set  like  the  teeth  of  a  rake.  But 
what  has  a  cart  to  do  here  1  There  is  perhaps  a  touch 
of  what  an  editor  of  old  doggerel  would  benignantly  call 
humor,  in  the  tanner's  forgetfulness  of  his  raiment, 
but  the  cart  is  as  little  to  the  purpose  as  one  of  Mr. 
Hazlitt's  own  notes.  The  tanner  was  on  horseback,  as 
the  roads  of  the  period  required  that  he  should  be,  and 
good  old  Ritson  was  plainly  on  the  right  track  in  his 
reading,  though  his  text  was  muddled  by  a  misprint. 

w 


354  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

As  it  was,  he  got  one  word  right,  and  so  far  has  the 
advantage  of  Mr.  Hazlitt.  The  true  reading  is,  of 
course,  ner  a  dell,  never  a  deal,  not  a  whit.  The  very 
phrase  occurs  in  another  poem  which  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  re 
printed  in  his  collection,  — 

"  For  never  a  dell 
He  wyll  me  love  agayne."   (Vol.  III.  p.  2.) 

That  adell  was  a  misprint  in  Ritson  is  proved  by  the  fact 
that  the  word  does  not  appear  in  his  glossary.  If  we 
were  to  bring  Mr.  Hazlitt  to  book  for  his  misprints  !  Iu 
the  poem  we  have  just  quoted  he  gravely  prints,  — 

"  Matter  in  dede, 
My  sides  did  blede," 

for  "mother,  indede,"  "through  ryght  wysenes "  for 
"  though  ryghtwisenes,"  "  with  man  vnkynde  "  for  "  sith 
man  vnkynde,"  "ye  knowe  a  parte"  for  "ye  knowe 
aperte,"  "  here  in  "  for  "herein,"  all  of  which  make  non 
sense,  and  all  come  within  the  first  one  hundred  and 
fifty  lines,  and  those  of  the  shortest,  mostly  of  four  syl 
lables  each.  Perhaps  they  rather  prove  ignorance  than 
want  of  care.  One  blunder  falling  within  the  same 
limits  we  have  reserved  for  special  comment,  because  it 
affords  a  good  example  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's  style  of  editing  : — 

"  Your  herte  souerayne 
Clouen  in  twayne 
By  longes  the  blynde."  (Vol.  III.  p.  7.) 

Here  the  uninstructed  reader  would  be  as  completely  in 
the  ctark  as  to  what  longes  meant  as  the  editor  plainly 
was  himself.  The  old  rhymer  no  doubt  wrote  Longis, 
meaning  thereby  Longinus,  a  personage  familiar  enough, 
one  should  think,  to  any  reader  of  mediaeval  poetry. 
Mr.  Hazlitt  absolves  himself  for  not  having  supplied  a 
glossary  by  the  plea  that  none  is  needed  by  the  class 
of  readers  for  whom  his  volumes  are  intended.  But  this 
will  hardly  seem  a  valid  excuse  for  a  gentleman  who 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS.  355 

often  goes  out  of  his  way  to  explain  in  his  notes  such 
simple  matters  as  that  "  shape  "  means  "  form,"  and  that 
"  Johan  of  the  golden  mouthe  "  means  "  St.  Chrysostom," 
which,  indeed,  it  does  not,  any  more  than  Johannes  Bap- 
tista  means  St.  Baptist.  We  will  supply  Mr.  Hazlitt 
with  an  illustration  of  the  passage  from  Bekker's  Fera- 
bras,  the  more  willingly  as  it  may  direct  his  attention  to 
a  shining  example  of  how  an  old  poem  should  be 
edited  :  — 

"  en  la  crotz  vos  pendero  li  fals  luzieu  truan, 
can  Longis  vos  ferie  de  sa  lansa  trencan: 
el  non  avia  vist  en  trastot  son  vivan ; 
lo  sane  li  venc  per  1'asta  entro  al  punh  colan ; 
e  [el]  toquet  ne  sos  huelhs  si  vie  el  mantentin." 

Mr.  Hazlitt,  to  be  sure  (who  prints  sang  parlez  for  sanz 
parler)  (Vol.  I.  p.  265),  will  not  be  able  to  form  any  no 
tion  of  what  these  verses  mean,  but  perhaps  he  will  be 
able  to  draw  an  inference  from  the  capital  L  that  longes 
is  a  proper  name.  The  word  truan  at  the  end  of  the  first 
verse  of  our  citation  may  also  suggest  to  him  that  truant 
is  not  quite  so  satisfactory  an  explanation  of  the  word 
trewdt  as  he  seems  to  think.  (Vol.  IV.  p.  24,  note.}  In 
deference  to  Mr.  Hazlitt's  presumed  familiarity  with  an 
author  sometimes  quoted  by  him  in  his  notes,  we  will 
point  him  to  another  illustration  :  — 

"  Ac  ther  cam  forth  a  knyght, 
With  a  kene  spere  y-grounde 
Highte  Longeus,  as  the  lettre  telleth, 
And  longe  hadde  lore  his  sighte." 

Piers  Ploughman,  Wright,  p.  374. 

Mr.  Hazlitt  shows  to  peculiar  advantage  where  old 
French  is  in  question.  Upon  the  word  Osyll  he  favors 
us  with  the  following  note  :  "  The  blackbird.  In  East 
Cornwall  ozell  is  used  to  signify  the  windpipe,  and  thence 
the  bird  may  have  had  its  name,  as  Mr.  Couch  has  sug 
gested  to  me."  (Vol.  II.  p.  25.)  Of  course  the  black- 


356  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

bird,  alone  among  fowls,  is  distinguished  by  a  windpipe  ! 
The  name  is  merely  another  form  of  0.  F.  oisil,  and  was 
usurped  caturally  enough  by  one  of  the  commonest 
birds,  just  as  pajaro  (L.  passer)  in  Spanish,  by  a  similar 
process  in  the  opposite  direction,  came  to  mean  bird  in 
general.  On  the  very  next  page  he  speaks  of  "  the  Ro 
mance  which  is  vulgarly  entitled  Lybeaus  Disconus,  i.  e. 
Le  Beau  Disconnu"  If  he  had  corrected  Disconus  to 
Desconus,  all  had  been  well ;  but  Disconnu  neither  is  nor 
ever  was  French  at  all.  Where  there  is  blundering  to 
be  done,  one  stone  often  serves  Mr.  Hazlitt  for  two  birds. 
Ly  leans  Disconus  is  perfectly  correct  old  French,  and 
another  form  of  the  adjective  (bins}  perhaps  explains  the 
sound  we  give  to  the  first  syllable  of  beauty  and  Beau 
fort.  A  barrister  at  law,  as  Mr.  Hazlitt  ?s,  may  not  be 
called  on  to  know  anything  about  old  English  or  modern 
French,  but  we  might  fairly  expect  him  to  have  at  least 
a  smattering  of  Law  French  !  In  volume  fourth,  page 
129,  a  goodman  trying  his  wife, 

"  Bad  her  take  the  pot  that  sod  ouer  the  fire 
And  set  it  abooue  vpon  the  astire." 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  note  upon  astire  is  "  hearth,  i.  q.  astre." 
Knowing  that  the  modern  French  was  atre,  he  to<7 
rashly  inferred  a  form  which  never  existed  except  iu 
Italian.  The  old  French  word  is  aistre  or  estre,  but  Mr. 
Hazlitt,  as  usual,  prefers  something  that  is  neither  old 
French  nor  new.  We  do  not  pretend  to  know  what 
astire  means,  but  a  hearth  that  should  be  abooue  the  pot 
seething  over  the  fire  would  be  unusual,  to  say  the  least, 
in  our  semi-civilized  country. 

In  the  "Lyfe  of  Roberte  the  Deuill"  (Vol.  I.  p.  232), 
Mr.  Hazlitt  twice  makes  a  knight  sentre  his  lance,  and 
tells  us  in  a  note  that  the  "Ed.  1798  has  /entered.'"  a 
very  easy  misprint  for  the  right  word  j "entered.  What 
Mr.  Hazlitt  supposed  to  be  the  meaning  of  sentre  he  has 


LIBRARY    OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  357 

not  vouchsafed  to  tell  us.  Fautre  (sometimes  faltre  or 
feutre)  means  in  old  French  the  rest  of  a  lance.  Thus 
in  the  Roman  du  Renart  (26517), 

"  Et  mist  sa  lance  sor  lefautre." 

But  it  also  meant  a  peculiar  kind  of  rest.  In  Sir  F. 
Madden's  edition  of  Gaivayne  (to  which  Mr.  Hazlitt 
refers  occasionally)  we  read, 

"  They  feutred  their  lances,  these  knyghtes  good"; 
and  in  the  same  editor's  "  William  and  the  Werwolf," 

"  With  sper  festened  infeuter,  him  for  to  spille." 

In  a  note  on  the  latter  passage  Sir  F.  Madden  says, 
"  There  seems  no  reason,  however,  why  it  [feuter]  should 
not  mean  the  rest  attached  to  the  armour."  But  Roque 
fort  was  certainly  right  in  calling  it  a  "  garniture  d'une 
selle  pour  tenir  la  lance."  A  spear  fastened  to  the  sad 
dle  gave  more  deadly  weight  to  the  blow.  The  "him 
for  to  spille  "  implies  this.  So  in  "  Merlin  "  (E.  E.  Text 
Soc.,  p.  488) :  "  Than  thei  toke  speres  grete  and  rude, 
and  putte  hem  in  fewtre,  and  that  is  the  grettest 
crewelte  that  oon  may  do,  ff'or  turnement  oweth  to  be 
with-oute  felonye,  and  they  meved  to  smyte  hem  as  in 
mortall  werre."  The  context  shows  that  the  fewtre 
turned  sport  into  earnest.  A  citation  in  Raynouard'a 
Lexique  Roman  (though  wrongly  explained  by  him)  di 
rected  us  to  a  passage  which  proves  that  this  particular 
kind  of  rest  for  the  lance  was  attached  to  the  saddle,  in 
order  to  render  the  blow  heavier  :  — 

"  Lances  a  [lege  as]  arsons  afeutre'es 
Pour  plus  de  dures  colees  rendre." 

Branche  des  Royaux  Lignages,  4514,  4515. 

Mr.  Hazlitt,  as  we  have  said,  lets  no  occasion  slip  to 
insinuate  the  inaccuracy  and  carelessness  of  his  pre 
decessors.  The  long  and  useful  career  of  Mr.  Wright, 


358  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

who,  if  he  had  given  us  nothing  more  than  his  excel 
lent  edition  of  "  Piers  Ploughman  "  and  the  volume  of 
"Ancient  Vocabularies,"  would  have  deserved  the  grati 
tude  of  all  lovers  of  our  literature  or  students  of  our 
language,  does  not  save  him  from  the  severe  justice  of 
Mr.  Hazlitt,  nor  is  the  name  of  Wartou  too  venerable  to 
be  coupled  with  a  derogatory  innuendo.  Mr.  Wright 
needs  no  plea  in  abatement  from  us,  and  a  mischance  of 
Mr.  Hazlitt's  own  has  comically  avenged  Warton.  The 
word  prayer,  it  seems,  had  somehow  substituted  itself 
for  prayse  in  a  citation  by  Warton  of  the  title  of  the 
"  Schole-House  of  Women."  Mr.  Hazlitt  thereupon 
takes  occasion  to  charge  him  with  often  "  speaking  at 
random,"  and  after  suggesting  that  it  might  have  been 
the  blunder  of  a  copyist,  adds,  "or  it  is  by  no  means 
impossible  that  Warton  himself,  having  been  allowed 
to  inspect  the  production,  was  guilty  of  this  oversight." 
(Vol.  IV.  p.  98.)  Now,  on  the  three  hundred  and  eigh 
teenth  page  of  the  same  volume,  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  allowed 
the  following  couplet  to  escape  his  conscientious  atten 
tion  :  — 

"Next,  that  no  gallant  should  not  ought  suppose 
That  prayers  and  glory  doth  consist  in  cloathes." 

Lege,  nostro  periculo,  PRAYSE  !  Were  dear  old  Tom  still 
on  earth,  he  might  light  his  pipe  cheerfully  with  any 
one  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's  pages,  secure  that  in  so  doing  he 
was  consuming  a  brace  of  blunders  at  the  least.  The 
word  prayer  is  an  unlucky  one  for  Mr.  Hazlitt.  In  the 
"Knyght  and  his  Wyfe"  (Vol.  II.  p.  18)  he  prints  :  — 

"  And  sayd,  Syre,  I  rede  we  make 
In  this  chapel  cure  prayers, 
That  God  us  kepe  both  in  ferrus." 

Why  did  not  Mr.  Hazlitt,  who  explains  so  many  things 
that  everybody  knows,  give  us  a  note  upon  in  ferrus  ? 
It  would  have  matched  his  admirable  elucidation  of 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  359 

waygose,  which  we  shall  notice  presently.  Is  it  not 
barely  possible  that  the  MS.  may  have  read  prayere  and 
in  fere  ?  Prayere  occurs  two  verses  further  on,  and  not 
as  a  rhyme. 

Mr.  Hazlitt  even  sets  Sir  Frederick  Madden  right  on 
a  question  of  Old  English  grammar,  telling  him  super 
ciliously  that  can,  with  an  infinitive,  in  such  phrases  as 
he  can  go,  is  used  not  "  to  denote  a  past  tense,  but  an 
imperfect  tense."  By  past  we  suppose  him  to  mean  per 
fect.  But  even  if  an  imperfect  tense  were  not  a  past 
one,  we  can  show  by  a  passage  in  one  of  the  poems  in 
this  very  collection  that  can,  in  the  phrases  referred 
to,  sometimes  not  only  denotes  a  past  but  a  perfect 
tense : — 

"  And  thorow  that  worde  y  felle  in  pryde; 

As  the  aungelle  can  of  hevyn  glyde, 

And  with  the  tywnkling*  of  an  eye 

God  for-dud  alle  that  maystrye 

And  so  hath  he  done  for  my  gylte." 

Now  the  angel  here  is  Lucifer,  and  can  of  hevyn  glyde 
means  simply  fell  from  Jieaven,  not  was  falling.  It  is  in 
the  same  tense  as  for-dud  in  the  next  line.  The  fall  of 
the  angels  is  surely  a  fait  accompli.  In  the  last  line,  by 
the  way,  Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  "my  for"  to  "for  my," 
and  wrongly,  the  my  agreeing  with  maystrye  under 
stood.  In  modern  English  we  should  use  mine  in  the 
same  way.  But  Sir  Frederick  Madden  can  take  care  of 
himself. 

We  have  less  patience  with  Mr.  Hazlitt's  impertinence 
to  Ritson,  a  man  of  ample  reading  and  excellent  taste 
in  selection,  and  who,  real  scholar  as  he  was,  always 
drew  from  original  sources.  "VYe  have  &  foible  for  Ritson 
with  his  oddities  of  spelling,  his  acerb  humor,  his  un 
consciously  depreciatory  mister  Tyrwhitts  and  mister 
Bryants,  and  his  obstinate  disbelief  in  Doctor  Percy's 

*  The  careless  Ritson  would  have  printed  this  twyrikling. 


360  LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS. 

folio  manuscript.  Above  all,  he  was  a  most  conscien 
tious  editor,  and  an  accurate  one  so  far  as  was  possible 
with  the  lights  of  that  day.  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  reprinted 
two  poems,  "  The  Squyr  of  Low  Degre "  and  "  The 
Knight  of  Curtesy,"  which  ,had  already  been  edited  by 
Ititsou.  The  former  of  these  has  passages  that  are  un 
surpassed  in  simple  beauty  by  anything  in  our  earlier 
poetry.  The  author  of  it  was  a  good  versifier,  and  Rit- 
son,  though  he  corrected  some  glaring  errors,  did  not 
deal  so  trenchantly  with  verses  manifestly  lamed  by  the 
copyist  as  perhaps  an  editor  should.*  Mr.  Hazlitt  says 
of  Ritson's  text,  that  "  it  offers  more  than  an  hundred 
departures  from  the  original,"  and  of  the  "Knight  of 
Courtesy,"  that  "  Ritson's  text  is  by  no  means  accurate." 
Now  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  adopted  nearly  all  of  Ritson's 
emendations,  without  giving  the  least  hint  of  it.  On 
the  contrary,  in  some  five  or  six  instances,  he  gives  the 
original  reading  in  a  foot-note  with  an  "  old  ed.  has  "  so 
and  so,  thus  leaving  the  reader  to  infer  that  the  correc 
tions  were  his  own.  Where  he  has  not  followed  Ritson, 
he  has  almost  uniformly  blundered,  and  that  through 
sheer  ignorance.  For  example,  he  prints, 

"  Alas !  it  tourned  to  wroth  her  heyle," 

where  Ritson  had  substituted  wrotherheyle.  The  meas 
ure  shows  that  Ritson  was  right.  Wroth  her  lieyle,  more 
over,  is  nonsense.  It  should  have  been  wrother  her  heyle 
at  any  rate,  but  the  text  is  far  too  modern  to  admit  of 
that  archaic  form.  In  the  "  Debate  of  the  Body  and  the 
Soul  "  (Matzner's  A.  E.  Sprachproben,  103)  we  have, 

*  For  example :  — 

"And  in  the  arber  was  a  tre 

A  fairer  in  the  world  might  none  befc" 
should  certainly  read, 

"  None  fairer  in  the  world  might  be." 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  361 

"  Why  schope  thou  me  to  •wrother-hele," 
and  in  "Dame  Siris  "  (Ibid.,  110), 

"  To  goder  hele  ever  came  thou  hider." 
Mr.  Hazlitt  prints, 

"  For  yf  it  may  be  found  in  thee 

•  That  thou  them  [de]  fame  for  emiyte." 

The  emendation  [de]  is  Ritson's,  and  is  probably  right, 
though  it  would  require,  for  the  metre's  sake,  the  elision 
of  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  verse.  But  what  is 
enuyte  ?  Ritson  reads  enmyte,  which  is,  of  course,  the 
true  reading.  Mr.  Hazlitt  prints  (as  usual  either  with 
out  apprehending  or  without  regarding  the  sense), 

"  With  browes  bent  and  eyes  full  mery," 

where  Ritson  has  brent,  and  gives  parallel  passages  in 
his  note  on  the  word.  Mr.  Hazlitt  gives  us 

"  To  here  the  bugles  there  yblow, 
With  their  bugles  in  that  place," 

though  Ritson  had  made  the  proper  correction  to  hegles. 
Mr.  Hazlitt,  with  ludicrous  nonchalance,  allows  the  Squire 
to  press  into  the  throng 

"  With  a  bastard  large  and  longe," 

and  that  with  the  right  word  (baslarde)  staring  him  in 
the  face  from  Ritson's  text.  We  wonder  he  did  not  give 
us  an  illustrative  quotation  from  Falconbridge  !  Both 
editors  have  allowed  some  gross  errors  to  escape,  such 
as  "  come  not "  for  "  come  "  (v.  425)  ;  "  so  leue  he  be  " 
for  "  ye  be  "  (v.  593) ;  "  vnto  her  chambre  "  for  "  vnto 
your"  (v.  993);  but  in  general  Ritson's  is  the  better 
and  more  intelligent  text  of  the  two.  In  the  "  Knight 
of  Curtesy,"  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  followed  Ritson's  text 
almost  literatim.  Indeed,  it  is  demonstrable  that  he 
gave  it  to  his  printers  as  copy  to  set  up  from.  The  proof 
is  this  :  Ritson  has  accented  a  few  words  ending  in  te. 
16 


362  LIBRARY   OF   OLD  AUTHORS. 

Generally  he  uses  the  grave  accent,  but  now  and  then 
the  acute.  Mr.  Hazlitt's  text  follows  all  these  variations 
exactly.  The  main  difference  between  the  two  is  that 
Bitson  prints  the  first  personal  pronoun  i,  and  Mr.  Haz- 
litt,  I.  Ritsou  is  probably  right;  for  in  the  "Schole- 
house  of  Women"  (vv.  537,  538)  where  the  text  no 
doubt  was 

"  i  [i.  e.  one]  deuil  a  woman  to  speak  may  constrain, 
But  all  that  in  hel  be  cannot  let  it  again," 

Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  "  i "  to  "  A,"  and  says  in  a  note, 
"  Old  ed.  has  7."  That  by  his  correction  he  should  miss 
the  point  was  only  natural ;  for  he  evidently  conceives 
that  the  sense  of  a  passage  does  not  in  the  least  concern 
an  editor.  An  instance  or  two  will  suffice.  In  the 
"Knyght  and  his  Wyfe"  (Vol.  II.  p.  17)  we  read, 

"  The  fynd  tyl  hure  hade  myche  tene 
As  hit  was  a  sterfull  we  seme !  " 

Mr.  Hazlitt  in  a  note  explains  tene  to  mean  "  trouble  or 
sorrow  "  ;  but  if  that  were  its  meaning  here,  we  should 
read  made,  and  not  hade,  which  would  give  to  the  word 
its  other  sense  of  attention.  The  last  verse  of  the  coup 
let  Mr.  Hazlitt  seems  to  think  perfectly  intelligible  as  it 
stands.  We  should  not  be  surprised  to  learn  that  he 
looked  upon  it  as  the  one  gem  that  gave  lustre  to  a  poem 
otherwise  of  the  dreariest.  We  fear  we  shall  rob  it  of  all 
its  charm  for  him  by  putting  it  into  modern  English  :  — 
"  As  it  was  after  full  well  seen." 

So  in  the  "Smyth and  his  Dame"  (Vol.  III.  p.  204) 

we  read, 

"  It  were  a  lytele  maystry 
To  make  a  blynde  man  to  se," 

instead  of  "  as  lytell."  It  might,  indeed,  be  as  easy  to 
perform  the  miracle  on  a  blind  man  as  on  Mr.  Hazlitt. 
Again,  in  the  same  poem,  a  little  further  on, 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  363 

"  For  I  tell  the  now  trevely, 
Is  none  so  wyse  ne  to  sle, 
But  ever  ye  may  som  what  lere," 

which,  of  course,  should  be, 

"  ne  so  sle 
But  ever  he  may  som  what  lere." 

Worse  than  all,  Mr.  Hazlitt  tells  us  (Vol.  I.  p.  158)  that 
when  they  bury  the  great  Khan,  they  lay  his  body  in  a 
tabernacle, 

"  With  sheld  and  spere  and  other  wede 
With  a  whit  mere  to  gyf  him  in  ylke." 

"VVe  will  let  Sir  John  Maundeville  correct  the  last  verse  : 
"  And  they  seyn  that  when  he  shale  come  into  another 
World  ....  the  mare  schalle  gheven  him  mylL"  Mr. 
Hazlitt  gives  us  some  wretched  doggerel  by  "Piers  of 
Fulham,"  and  gives  it  swarming  with  blunders.  We 
take  at  random  a  couple  of  specimens :  — 

"  And  loveship  goith  ay  to  warke 
Where  that  presence  is  put  a  bake,"  (Vol.  II.  pp.  13, 14,) 

where  we  should  read  "love's  ship,"  "wrake,"  and 
"  abake."  Again,  just  below, 

"  Ffor  men  haue  seyn  here  to  foryn, 
That  love  laughet  when  men  be  forsworn." 

Love  should  be  "love."  Ovid  is  the  obscure  person 
alluded  to  in  the  "  men  here  to  foryn  "  : 

"  Jupiter  e  ccelo  perjuria  ridet  amantum." 

We  dare  say  Mr.  Hazlitt,  if  he  ever  read  the  passage, 
took  it  for  granted  that  "  to  foryn  "  meant  too  foreign, 
and  gave  it  up  in  despair.  But  surely  Shakespeare's 

"  At  lovers'  perjuries, 
They  say,  Jove  laughs," 

is  not  too  foreign  to  have  put  him  on  the  right  scent. 

Mr.  Hazlitt  is  so  particular  in  giving  us  v  for  u  and 
vice  versa,  that  such  oversights  are  a  little  annoying. 


364  L1BEAKY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

Every  man  his  own  editor  seems  to  be  his  theory  of  the 
•way  in  which  old  poetry  should  be  reprinted.  On  this 
plan,  the  more  riddles  you  leave  (or  make)  for  the  reader 
to  solve,  the  more  pleasure  you  give  him.  To  correct 
the  blunders  in  any  book  edited  by  Mr.  Hazlitt  would 
give  the  young  student  a  pretty  thorough  training  in 
archaic  English.  In  this  sense  the  volumes  before  us 
might  be  safely  recommended  to  colleges  and  schools. 
When  Mr.  Hazlitt  undertakes  to  correct,  he  is  pretty 
sure  to  go  wrong.  For  example,  in  "  Doctour  Doubble 
Ale  "  (Vol.  III.  p.  309)  he  amends  thus  :  - 

"  And  sometyme  mikle  strife  is 
Among  the  ale  wyfes,  [y-wis] ; 

where  the  original  is  right  as  it  stands.  Just  before,  in 
the  same  poem,  we  have  a  parallel  instance  :  — 

"  And  doctours  dulpatis 
That  falsely  to  them  pratis, 
And  bring  them  to  the  gates." 

The  original  probably  reads  (or  should  read)  wyfis  and 
gatis.  But  it  is  too  much  to  expect  of  Mr.  Hazlitt  that 
he  should  remember  the  very  poems  he  is  editing  from 
one  page  to  another,  nay,  as  we  shall  presently  show, 
that  he  should  even  read  them.  He  will  change  be  into 
ben  where  he  should  have  let  it  alone  (thoxigh  his  own 
volumes  might  have  furnished  him  with  such  examples 
as  "  were  go,"  "  have  se,"  "  is  do,"  and  fifty  more),  but 
he  will  sternly  retain  bene  where  the  rhyme  requires  be, 
and  Ritson  had  so  printed.  In  "  Adam  Bel  "  the  word 
pryme  occurs  (Vol.  II.  p.  140),  and  he  vouchsafes  us  the 
following  note  :  "  i.  e.  noon.  It  is  commonly  used  by 
early  writers  in  this  sense.  In  the  Four  P.  P.,  by  John 
Hey  wood,  circa  1540,  the  apothecary  says 

'If  he  taste  this  boxe  nye  aboute  the  pryme 
By  the  masse,  he  is  in  heven  or  even  songe  tyme.'  " 


LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS.  365 

Let  our  readers  admire  with  us  the  easy  "it  is  com 
monly  used  "  of  Mr.  Hazlitt,  as  if  he  had  store  of  other 
examples  in  his  note-book.  He  could  an  if  he  would  ! 
But  unhappily  he  borrowed  this  single  quotation  from 
Nares,  and,  as  usual,  it  throws  no  scintilla  of  light  upon 
the  point  in  question,  for  his  habit  in  annotation  is  to 
find  by  means  of  a  glossary  some  passage  (or  passages  if 
possible)  in  which  the  word  to  be  explained  occurs,  and 
then  —  why,  then  to  give  the  word  as  an  explanation  of 
itself.  But  in  this  instance,  Mr.  Hazlitt,  by  the  time  he 
had  reached  the  middle  of  his  next  volume  (Vol.  III. 
p.  281)  had  wholly  forgotten  that  i^ryme  was  "commonly 
used  by  early  writers  "  for  noon,  and  in  a  note  on  the  fol 
lowing  passage, 

"  I  know  not  whates  a  clocke 
But  by  the  countre  cocke, 
The  mone  nor  yet  the  pryme, 
Vntyll  the  sonne  do  shyne," 

he  informs  us  that  it  means  "  six  o'clock  in  the  morn 
ing  "  !  Here  again  this  editor,  who  taxes  Ritson  with 
want  of  care,  prints  mone  for  none  in  the  very  verse  he 
is  annotating,  and  which  we  may  therefore  presume 
that  he  had  read.  A  man  who  did  not  know  the  moon 
till  the  sun  showed  it  him  is  a  match  even  for  Mr.  Haz 
litt  himself.  We  wish  it  were  as  easy  as  he  seems  to 
think  it  to  settle  exactly  what  pryme  means  when  used 
by  our  "  early  writers,"  but  it  is  at  least  absolutely  cer 
tain  that  it  did  not  mean  noon. 

But  Mr.  Hazlitt,  if  these  volumes  are  competent  wit 
nesses,  knows  nothing  whatever  about  English,  old  or 
new.  In  the  "  Mery  Jest  of  Dane  Hew  "  he  finds  the 
following  verses, 

"  Dame  he  said  what  shall  we  now  doo 
Sir  she  said  so  mote  go 
The  munk  in  a  corEer  ye  shall  lay  " 


366  LIBRARY    OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

which  we  print  purposely  without  punctuation.  Mr. 
Hazlitt  prints  them  thus, 

"  Dame,  he  said,  what  shall  we  now  doo  ? 
Sir,  she  said,  so  mote  [it]  go. 
The  munk,"  &c., 

and  gives  us  a  note  on  the  locution  he  has  invented  to 
this  effect,  "  ?  so  might  it  be  managed."  And  the 
Chancellor  said,  I  doubt !  Mr.  Hazlitt's  query  makes 
such  a  singular  exception  to  his  more  natural  mood  of 
immediate  inspiration  that  it  is  almost  pathetic.  The 
amended  verse,  as  everybody  (not  confused  by  too  great 
familiarity  with  our  "early  writers")  knows,  should 

read, 

"  Sir,  she  said,  so  might  I  go," 

and  should  be  followed  only  by  a  comma,  to  show  its 
connection  with  the  next.  The  phrase  "  so  mote  I  go," 
is  as  common  as  a  weed  in  the  works  of  the  elder  poets, 
both  French  and  English  ;  it  occurs  several  times  in  Mr. 
Hazlitt's  own  collection,  and  its  other  form,  "  so  mote  I 
fare,"  which  may  also  be  found  there,  explains  its  mean 
ing.  On  the  phrase  point-device  (Vol.  III.  p.  117)  Mr. 
Hazlitt  has  a  positively  incredible  note,  of  which  we 
copy  only  a  part  :  "  This  term,  which  is  commonly  used 
in  early  poems  "  [mark  once  more  his  intimacy  with  our 
earlier  literature]  "  to  signify  extreme  exactitude,  origi 
nated  in  the  points  which  were  marked  on  the  astrolabe, 
as  one  of  the  means  which  the  astrologers  and  dabblers 
in  the  black  art  adopted  to  enable  them  (as  they  pre 
tended)  to  read  the  fortunes  of  those  by  whom  they  were 
consulted  in  the  stars  and  planetary  orbs.  The  exces 
sive  precision  which  was  held  to  be  requisite  in  the 
delineation  of  these  points  "  [the  delineation  of  a  point 
is  good  !]  "  <fec.  on  the  astrolabe,  led  to  point-device,  or 
points-device  (as  it  is  sometimes  found  spelled),  being 
used  as  a  proverbial  expression  for  minute  accuracy  of 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  367 

any  kind."  Then  follows  a  quotation  from  Gower,  in 
which  an  astrolabe  is  spoken  of  "with  points  and  cercles 
merveilous,"  and  the  note  proceeds  thus  :  "  Shakespeare 
makes  use  of  a  similar  figure  of  speech  in  the  Tempest, 
I.  2,  where  the  following  dialogue  takes  place  between 
Prospero  and  Ariel  :  — 

'  Prosp.     Hast  thou,  spirit, 
Performed  to  point  the  tempest  that  I  bade  thee? 
Ar.    In  every  article.'  " 

Neither  the  proposed  etymology  nor  the  illustration 
requires  any  remai'k  from  us.  We  will  only  say  that 
point-device  is  excellently  explained  and  illustrated  by 
Wedgwood. 

We  will  give  a  few  more  examples  out  of  many  to 
show  Mr.  Hazlitt's  utter  unfitness  for  the  task  he  has 
undertaken.  In  the  "  Kyng  and  the  Hermyt "  are  the 
following  verses, 

"  A  wyld  wey,  I  hold,  it  were 
The  wey  to  wend,  I  you  swere, 
Bot  ye  the  dey  may  se," 

meaning  simply,  "  I  think  it  would  be  a  wild  thing  (in 
you)  to  go  on  your  way  \mless  you  wait  for  daylight." 
Mr.  Hazlitt  punctuates  and  amends  thus  :  — 

"  A  wyld  wey  I  hold  it  were, 
The  wey  to  wend,  I  you  swere, 
Ye  bot  [by]  the  dey  may  se."    (Vol.  I.  p.  19.) 

The  word  bot  seems  a  stumbling-block  to  Mr.  Hazlitt. 
On  page  54  of  the  same  volume  we  have, 

"  Herd  i  neuere  bi  no  leuedi 
Hote  hendinesse  and  curteysi." 

The  use  of  the  word  by  as  in  this  passage  would  seem 
familiar  enough,  and  yet  in  the  "  Hye  Way  to  the 
Spittel  Hous"  Mr.  Hazlitt  explains  it  as  meaning  be. 
Any  boy  knows  that  ivithoitt  sometimes  means  unless 
(Fielding  uses  it  often  in  that  sense),  but  Mr.  Hazlitt 


368  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

seems  unaware  of  the  fact.  In  his  first  volume  (p.  224) 
he  gravely  prints  :  — 

"  They  trowed  verelye  that  she  shoulde  dye ; 
With  that  our  ladye  wold  her  helpe  and  spede." 

The  semicolon  after  dye  shows  that  this  is  not  a  mis 
print,  but  that  the  editor  saw  no  connection  between  the 
first  verse  and  the  second.  In  the  same  volume  (p. 
133)  we  have  the  verse, 

*'  He  was  a  grete  tenement  man,  and  ryche  of  londe  and  lede," 

and  to  lede  Mr.  Hazlitt  appends  this  note  :  "  Lede,  in  early 
English,  is  found  in  various  significations,  but  here 
stands  as  the  plural  of  lad,  a  servant."  In  what  con 
ceivable  sense  is  it  the  plural  of  lad?  And  does  lad 
necessarily  mean  a  servant]  The  Promptorium  lias 
ladde  glossed  by  garcio,  but  the  meaning  servant,  as  in 
the  parallel  cases  of  irais,  puer,  garfon,  and  boy,  was  a 
derivative  one,  and  of  later  origin.  The  word  means 
simply  man  (in  the  generic  sense)  and  in  the  plural  peo 
ple.  So  in  the  "  Squyr  of  Low  Degre," 

"  I  will  forsake  both  land  and  lede," 
and  in  the  "  Smyth  and  his  Dame," 

"  That  hath  both  land  and  lyth." 

The  word  was  not  "  used  in  various  significations."  Even 
so  lately  as  "  Flodden  Ffeild  "  we  find, 

"  He  was  a  noble  leed  of  high  degree." 

Connected  with  land  it  was  a  commonplace  in  German 
as  well  as  in  English.  So  in  the  Tristan  of  Godfrey  of 
Strasburg, 

,,<?r  23et>aW)  fin  ( it)  t  fcnt>e  ftn  (ant 
#11  jTnetf  marfcaltetf  Ijant." 

Mr.  Hazlitt  is  more  nearly  right  than  usual  when  he 
says  that  in  the  particular  case  cited  above  lede  means 
servants.  But  were  these  of  only  one  sex  ?  Does  he  not 
know  that  even  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  when 


LIBRARY    OF    OLD   AUTHORS.  369 

an  English  nobleman  spoke  of  "  my  people,"  he  meant 
simply  his  domestics  t 

Encountering  the  familiar  phrase  No  do!  (Vol.  IV. 
p.  64),  Mr.  Hazlitt  changes  it  to  Not  do  I  He  ^informs 
us  that  Goddes  are  (Vol.  I.  p.  197)  means  "  God's  heir"  ! 
He  says  (Vol  II.  p.  140) :  "  To  borrow,  in  the  sense  of 
to  take,  to  guard,  or  to  protect,  is  so  common  in  early 
English  that  it  is  unnecessary  to  bring  forward  any  illus 
tration  of  its  use  in  this  way."  But  he  relents,  and 
presently  gives  us  two  from  Ralph  Roister  Doister,  each 
containing  the  phrase  "  Saint  George  to  borrow  !  "  That 
borrow  means  take  no  owner  of  books  need  be  told,  and 
Mr.  Hazlitt  has  shown  great  skill  in  borrowing  other  peo 
ple's  illustrations  for  his  notes,  but  the  phrase  he  quotes 
has  no  such  meaning  as  he  gives  it.  Mr.  Dyce  in  a  note 
on  Skelton  explains  it  rightly,  "  St.  George  being  my 
pledge  or  surety." 

We  gather  a  few  more  of  these  flowers  of  exposition 
and  etymology  :  — 

"  The  while  thou  sittest  in  chirche,  thi  bedys  schalt  thou  bidde." 

(Vol.  I.  p.  181.) 

i.  e.  thou  shalt  offer  thy  prayers.  Mr.  Hazlitt's  note 
on  bidde  is,  "  i.  e.  bead.  So  in  The.  Kyng  aiid  the  Hermit, 
line  111:- 

'  That  herd  an  hermyte  there  within 
Unto  the  gate  he  gan  to  wyn 
Bedying  his  prayer.'  " 

Precisely  what  Mr.  Hazlitt  understands  by  leading  (or 
indeed  by  anything  else)  we  shall  not  presume  to  divine, 
but  we  should  like  to  hear  him  translate  "  if  any  man 
bidde  the  worshyp,"  which  comes  a  few  lines  further  on. 
Now  let  us  turn  to  page  191  of  the  same  volume. 
"  May  deny  s  ben  loneliche  and  no  thing  sekir."  Mr. 
Hazlitt  tells  us  in  a  note  that  "  sekir  or  sicker "  is  a 
very  common  form  of  secure,  and  quotes  in  illustration 
16*  x 


370  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

from  the  prose  Morte  Arthure,  "  A  !  said  Sir  Launcelot, 
comfort  yourselfe,  for  it  shall  bee  uuto  ua  as  a  great 
honour,  and  much  more  then  if  we  died  in  any  other 
places :  for  of  death  wee  be  sicker."  Now  in  the  text 
the  word  means  safe,  and  in  the  note  it  means  sure. 
Indeed  sure,  which  is  only  a  shorter  form  of  secure,  is  its 
ordinary  meaning.  "  I  mak  sicker,"  said  Kirkpatrick,  a 
not  unfitting  motto  for  certain  editors,  if  they  explained 
it  in  their  usual  phonetic  way. 

In  the  "  Frere  and  the  Boye,"  when  the  old  Aian  has 
given  the  boy  a  bow,  he  says  :  — 

"  Shote  therin,  whan  thou  good  thynke; 
For  yf  thou  shote  and  wynke, 
The  prycke  thow  shalte  hytte." 

Mr.  Hazlitt's  explanation  of  wynke  is  "to  close  one  eye 
in  taking  aim,"  and  he  quotes  a  passage  from  Gascoigne 
in  support  of  it.  Whatever  Gascoigne  meant  by  the 
word  (which  is  veiy  doubtful),  it  means  nothing  of  the 
kind  here,  and  is  another  proof  that  Mr.  Hazlitt  does 
not  think  it  so  important  to  understand  what  he  reads 
as  St.  Philip  did.  What  the  old  man  said  was,  "  even 
if  you  shut  both  your  eyes,  you  can't  help  hitting  the 
mark."  So  in  "  Piers  Ploughman  "  (Whitaker's  text), 

"  Wynkyng,  as  it  were,  wytterly  ich  saw  hyt." 

Again,  for  our  editor's  blunders  are  as  endless  as  the 
heads  of  an  old-fashioned  sermon,  in  the  "  Schole-House 
of  Women"  (Vol.  IV.  p.  130),  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  a  note  on 
the  phrase  "  make  it  nice," 

("  And  yet  alwates  they  biblo  bable 
Of  euery  matter  and  make  it  nice,") 

which  reads  thus  :  "  To  make  it  pleasant  or  snug.  I  do 
not  remember  to  have  seen  the  word  used  in  this  sense 
very  frequently.  But  Gascoigne  has  it  in  a  precisely 
similar  way  :  — 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  371 

1  The  glosse  of  gorgeous  Courtes  by  thee  did  please  mine  eye, 
A  stately  sight  me  thought  it  was  to  see  the  braue  go  by, 
To  see  their  feathers  flaunte,  to  make  [marke !]  their  straunge  deuise, 
To  lie  along  in  ladies  lappes,  to  lispe,  and  make  it  nice.'  " 

To  make  it  nice  means  nothing  more  nor  less  than  to 
play  the  fool,  or  rather,  to  make  a  fool  of  yourself  \  faire  le 
niais.  In  old  English  the  French  niais  and  nice,  from 
similarity  of  form  and  analogy  of  meaning,  naturally 
fused  together  in  the  word  nice,  which,  by  an  unusual 
luck,  has  been  promoted  from  a  derogatory  to  a  respect 
ful  sense.  Gascoigne's  lispe  might  have  put  Mr.  Hazlitt 
on  his  guard,  if  he  ever  considered  the  sense  of  what  he 
quotes.  But  he  never  does,  nor  of  what  he  edits  either. 
For  example,  in  the  "  Smyth  and  his  Dame  "  we  find 
the  following  note  :  "  Prowe,  or  prqffe,  is  not  at  all  un 
common  as  a  form  of  profit.  In  the  '  Seven  Names  of 
a  Prison,'  a  poem  printed  in  Reliquiae  Antiques,  we 
have,  — 

'  Quintum  nomen  istius  fovese  ita  probatum, 
A  place  of  pro/"  for  man  to  know  bothe  frend  and  foo.'  " 

Now  projf  and  prow  are  radically  different  words.  Proff 
here  means  proof,  and  if  Mr.  Hazlitt  had  read  the  stanza 
which  he  quotes,  he  would  have  found  (as  in  all  the 
others  of  the  same  poem)  the  meaning  repeated  in  Latin 
in  the  last  line,  probacio  amicorum. 

But  we  wish  to  leave  our  readers  (if  not  Mr.  Hazlitt) 
in  good  humor,  and  accordingly  we  have  reserved  two 
of  his  notes  as  bonnes  bouches.  In  "  Adam  Bel,"  when 
the  outlaws  ask  pardon  of  the  king, 

"  They  kneled  downe  without  lettyng 
And  each  helde  vp  his  hande." 

To  this  passage  (tolerably  plain  to  those  not  too  familiar 
with  "  our  early  literature  ")  Mr.  Hazlitt  appends  this 
solemn  note  :  '  To  hold  up  the  hand  was  formerly  a  sign 
of  respect  or  concurrence,  or  a  mode  of  taking  an  oath  ; 


372  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

and  thirdly  as  a  signal  for  mercy.  In  all  these  senses  it 
has  been  employed  from  the  most  ancient  times  ;  nor  is  it 
yet  out  of  practice,  as  many  savage  nations  still  testify 
their  respect  to  a  superior  by  holding  their  hand  [either 
their  hands  or  the  hand,  Mr.  Hazlitt !]  over  their  head. 
Touching  the  hat  appears  to  be  a  vestige  of  the  same 
custom.  In  the  present  passage  the  three  outlaws  may 
be  understood  to  kneel  on  approaching  the  throne,  and 
to  hold  up  each  a  hand  as  a  token  that  they  desire  to 
ask  the  royal  clemency  or  favour.  In  the  lines  which  are 
subjoined  it  [what  T\  implies  a  solemn  assent  to  an  oath  : 

'  This  swore  the  duke  and  all  his  men, 
And  all  the  lordes  that  with  him  lond, 
And  tharto  to*  held  they  up  thaire  hand.'  " 

Minot's  Poems,  ed.  1825,  p.  9. 

The  admirable  Tupper  could  not  have  done  better  than 
this,  even  so  far  as  the  mere  English  of  it  is  concerned. 
Where  all  is  so  fine,  we  hesitate  to  declare  a  preference, 
but,  on  the  whole,  nrust  give  in  to  the  passage  about 
touching  the  hat,  which  is  as  good  as  "  mobbled  queen." 
The  Americans  are  still  among  the  "  savage  nations " 
•who  "  imply  a  solemn  assent  to  an  oath  "  by  holding 
up  the  hand.  Mr.  Hazlitt  does  not  seem  to  know  that 
the  question  whether  to  kiss  the  book  or  hold  up  the 
hand  was  once  a  serious  one  in  English  politics. 

But  Mr.  Hazlitt  can  do  better  even  than  this  !  Our 
readers  may  be  incredulous ;  but  we  shall  proceed  to 
show  that  he  can.  In  the  "  Schole-House  of  Women," 
among  much  other  equally  delicate  satire  of  the  other 
sex  (if  we  may  venture  still  to  call  them  so),  the  satirist 
undertakes  to  prove  that  woman  was  made,  not  of  the 
rib  of  a  man,  but  of  a  dog  :  — 

*  The  to  is,  we  need  not  say,  an  addition  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's.  What 
faith  can  we  put  in  the  text  of  a  man  who  so  often  copies  even  his 
quotations  inaccurately  ? 


LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS.  373 

"  And  yet  the  rib,  as  I  suppose, 
That  God  did  take  out  of  the  man 
A  dog  vp  caught,  and  a  way  gose 
Eat  It  clene ,  so  that  as  than 
The  woork  to  finish  that  God  began 
Could  not  be,  as  we  haue  said, 
Because  the  dog  the  rib  conuaid. 

A  remedy  God  found  as  yet; 
Out  of  the  dog  he  took  a  rib." 

Mr.  Hazlitt  has  a  long  note  on  way  gose,  of  which  the 
first  sentence  shall  suffice  us  :  "  The  origin  of  the  term 
way-goose  is  involved  in  some  obscurity."  We  should 
think  so,  to  be  sure  !  Let  us  modernize  the  spelling  and 
grammar,  and  correct  the  punctuation,  and  then  Bee  how 
it  looks  :  — 

"  A  dog  up  caught  and  away  goes. 
Eats  it  up." 

We  will  ask  Mr.  Hazlitt  to  compare  the  text,  as  he 
prints  it,  with 

"  Into  the  hall  he  gose."    ( Vol.  III.  p.  67.) 

We  should  have  expected  a  note  here  on  the  "  hall  he- 
goose."  Not  to  speak  of  the  point  of  the  joke,  such  as 
it  is,  a  goose  that  could  eat  up  a  man's  rib  could  only 
be  matched  by  one  that  could  swallow  such  a  note,  —  or 
write  it ! 

We  have  made  but  a  small  florilegium  from  Mr.  Haz- 
litt's  remarkable  volumes.  His  editorial  method  seems 
to  have  been  to  print  as  the  Lord  would,  till  his  eye  was 
caught  by  some  word  he  did  not  understand,  and  then  to 
make  the  reader  comfortable  by  a  note  showing  that  the 
editor  is  as  much  in  the  dark  as  he.  We  are  profoundly 
thankful  for  the  omission  of  a  glossary.  It  would  have 
been  a  nursery  and  seminary  of  blunder.  To  expose  pre 
tentious  charlatanry  is  sometimes  the  unpleasant  duty  of 
a  reviewer.  It  is  a  duty  we  never  seek,  and  should  not 
have  assumed  in  this  case  but  for  the  impertinence  with 


374  LIBRARY   OF   OLD   AUTHORS. 

which  Mr.  Hazlitt  has  treated  dead  and  living  scholars, 
the  latchets  of  whose  shoes  he  is  not  worthy  to  unloose, 
and  to  express  their  gratitude  to  whom  is,  or  ought  to  be, 
a  pleasure  to  all  honest  lovers  of  their  mother-tongue. 
If  he  who  has  most  to  learn  be  the  happiest  man,  Mr. 
Hazlitt  is  indeed  to  be  envied  ;  but  we  hope  he  will 
learn  a  great  deal  before  he  lays  his  prentice  hands  on 
Warton's  "  History  of  English  Poetry,"  a  classic  in  its 
own  way.  If  he  does  not  learn  before,  he  will  be  likely 
to  learn  after,  and  in  no  agreeable  fashion. 


EMERSON  THE  LECTURER. 


IT  is  a  singular  fact,  that  Mr.  Emerson  is  the  most 
steadily  attractive  lecturer  in  America.  Into  that 
somewhat  cold-waterish  region  adventurers  of  the  sensa 
tional  kind  come  down  now  and  then  with  a  splash,  to 
become  disregarded  King  Logs  before  the  next  season. 
But  Mr.  Emerson  always  draws.  A  lecturer  now  for 
something  like  a  third  of  a  century,  one  of  the  pioneers 
of  the  lecturing  system,  the  charm  of  his  voice,  his  man 
ner,  and  his  matter  has  never  lost  its  power  over  his 
earlier  hearers,  and  continually  winds  new  ones  in  its 
enchanting  meshes.  What  they  do  not  fully  understand 
they  take  on  trust,  and  listen,  saying  to  themselves,  as 
the  old  poet  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  — 

"  A  sweet,  attractive,  kind  of  grace, 
A  full  assurance  given  by  looks, 
Continual  comfort  in  a  face, 
The  lineaments  of  gospel  books." 

We  call  it  a  singular  fact,  because  we  Yankees  are 
thought  to  be  fond  of  the  spread-eagle  style,  and  noth 
ing  can  be  more  remote  from  that  than  his.  We  are 
reckoned  a  practical  folk,  who  would  rather  hear  about 
a  new  air-tight  stove  than  about  Plato  ;  yet  our  favorite 
teacher's  practicality  is  not  in  the  least  of  the  Poor 
Kichard  variety.  If  he  have  any  Buncombe  constit 
uency,  it  is  that  unrealized  commonwealth  of  philoso 
phers  which  Plotinus  proposed  to  establish  ;  and  if  he 
were  to  make  an  almanac,  his  directions  to  farmers  would 


376  EMERSON  THE  LECTURER. 

be  something  like  this  :  "  OCTOBER  :  Indian  Summer ; 
now  is  the  time  to  get  in  your  early  Vedas."  What, 
then,  is  his  secret  1  Is  it  not  that  he  out- Yankees  us 
all  1  that  his  range  includes  us  all  1  that  he  is  equally  at 
home  with  the  potato-disease  and  original  sin,  with  peg 
ging  shoes  and  the  Over-soul  ?  that,  as  we  try  all  trades, 
so  has  he  tried  all  cultures?  and  above  all,  that  his 
mysticism  gives  iis  a  counterpoise  to  our  super-practi 
cality  1 

There  is  no  man  living  to  whom,  as  a  writer,  so  many 
of  us  feel  and  thankfully  acknowledge  so  great  an  in 
debtedness  for  ennobling  impulses,  —  none  whom  so 
many  cannot  abide.  What  does  he  mean  ?  ask  these 
last.  Where  is  his  system?  What  is  the  use  of  it 
all  ?  What  the  4euse  have  we  to  do  with  Brahma  ? 
I  do  not  propose  to  write  an  essay  on  Emerson  at  this 
time.  I  will  only  say  that  one  may  find  grandeur 
and  consolation  in  a  starlit  night  without  caring  to 
ask  what  it  means,  save  grandeur  and  consolation; 
one  may  like  Montaigne,  as  some  ten  generations  be 
fore  us  have  done,  without  thinking  him  so  systematic 
as  some  more  eminently  tedious  (or  shall  we  say  te 
diously  eminent  ?)  authors ;  one  may  think  roses  as 
good  in  their  way  as  cabbages,  though  the  latter  would 
make  a  better  show  in  the  witness-box,  if  cross-examined 
as  to  their  usefulness  ;  and  as  for  Brahma,  why,  he  can 
take  care  of  himself,  and  won't  bite  us  at  any  rate. 

The  bother  with  Mr.  Emerson  is,  that,  though  he 
writes  in  prose,  he  is  essentially  a  poet.  If  you  undei*- 
take  to  paraphrase  what  he  says,  and  to  reduce  it  to 
words  of  one  syllable  for  infant  minds,  you  will  make  as 
sad  work  of  it  as  the  good  monk  with  his  analysis  of 
Homer  in  the  "Epistoke  Obscurorum  Virorum.''  We 
look  upon  him  as  one  of  the  few  men  of  genius  whom 
our  age.  has  produced,  and  there  needs  no  better  proof 


EMERSON   THE   LECTURER.  377 

of  it  than  his  masculine  faculty  of  fecundating  other 
minds.  Search  for  his  eloquence  in  his  books  and  you 
•will  perchance  miss  it,  but  meanwhile  you  will  find  that 
it  has  kindled  all  your  thoughts.  For  choice  and  pith 
of  language  he  belongs  to  a  better  age  than  ours,  and 
might  rub  shoulders  with  Fuller  and  Browne,  —  though 
he  does  use  that  abominable  word  reliable.  His  eye 
for  a  fine,  telling  phrase  that  will  carry  true  is  like 
that  of  a  backwoodsman  for  a  rifle  ;  and  he  will  dredge 
you  up  a  choice  word  from  the  mud  of  Cotton  Mather 
himself.  A  diction  at  once  so  rich  and  so  homely  as 
his  I  know  not  where  to  match  in  these  days  of  writ 
ing  by  the  page ;  it  is  like  homespun  cloth-of-gold. 
The  many  cannot  miss  his  meaning,  and  only  the  few 
can  find  it.  It  is  the  open  secret  of  all  true  genius. 
It  is  wholesome  to  angle  in  those  profound  pools,  though 
one  be  rewarded  with  nothing  more  than  the  leap  of 
a  fish  that  flashes  his  freckled  side  in  the  sun  and  as 
suddenly  absconds  in  the  dark  and  dreamy  waters  again. 
There  is  keen  excitement,  though  there  be  no  ponderable 
acquisition.  If  we  carry  nothing  home  in  our  baskets, 
there  is  ample  gain  in  dilated  lungs  and  stimulated 
blood.  What  does  he  mean,  quotha]  He  means  in 
spiring  hints,  a  divining-rod  to  your  deeper  nature. 
No  doubt,  Emerson,  like  all  original  men,  has  his  pecu 
liar  audience,  and  yet  I  know  none  that  can  hold  a 
promiscuous  crowd  in  pleased  attention  so  long  as  he. 
As  in  all  original  men,  there  is  something  for  every 
palate.  "  Would  you  know,"  says  Goethe,  "  the  ripest 
cherries  1  Ask  the  boys  and  the  blackbirds." 

The  announcement  that  such  a  pleasure  as  a  new 
course  of  lectures  by  him  is  coming,  to  people  as  old  as 
I  am,  is  something  like  those  forebodings  of  spring  that 
prepare  us  every  year  for  a  familiar  novelty,  none  the 
less  novel,  when  it  arrives,  because  it  is  familiar.  We 


378         EMERSON  THE  LECTURER. 

know  perfectly  well  what  we  are  to  expect  from  Mr.  Em 
erson,  and  yet  what  he  says  always  penetrates  and  stirs 
us,  as  is  apt  to  be  the  case  with  genius,  in  a  very  un 
looked-for  fashion.  Perhaps  genius  is  one  of  the  few 
things  which  we  gladly  allow  to  repeat  itself,  —  one  of 
the  few  that  multiply  rather  than  weaken  the  force  of 
their  impression  by  iteration  ]  Perhaps  some  of  us  hear 
more  than  the  mere  words,  are  moved  by  something 
deeper  than  the  thoughts  1  If  it  be  so,  we  are  quite 
right,  for  it  is  thirty  years  and  more  of  "  plain  living 
and  high  thinking  "  that  speak  to  us  in  this  altogether 
unique  lay-preacher.  We  have  shared  in  the  beneficence 
of  this  varied  culture,  this  fearless  impartiality  in  criti 
cism  and  speculation,  this  masculine  sincerity,  this  sweet 
ness  of  nature  which  rather  stimulates  than  cloys,  for  a 
generation  long.  If  ever  there  was  a  standing  testi 
monial  to  the  cumulative  power  and  value  of  Character, 
(and  we  need  it  sadly  in  these  days,)  we  have  it  in  this 
gracious  and  dignified  presence.  What  an  antiseptic 
is  a  pure  life  !  At  sixty-five  (or  two  years  beyond  his 
grand  climacteric,  as  he  would  prefer  to  call  it)  he  has 
that  privilege  of  soul  which  abolishes  the  calendar,  and 
presents  him  to  us  always  the  unwasted  contemporary 
of  his  own  prime.  I  do  not  know  if  he  seem  old  to  his 
younger  hearers,  but  we  who  have  known  him  so  long 
wonder  at  the  tenacity  with  which  he  maintains  himself 
even  in  the  outposts  of  youth.  I  suppose  it  is  not  the 
Emerson  of  1868  to  whom  we  listen.  For  us  the  whole 
life  of  the  man  is  distilled  in  the  clear  drop  of  every 
sentence,  and  behind  each  word  we  divine  the  force  of  a 
noble  character,  the  weight  of  a  large  capital  of  think 
ing  and  being.  We  do  not  go  to  hear  what  Emerson 
says  so  much  as  to  hear  Emerson.  Not  that  we  per 
ceive  any  falling-off  in  anything  that  ever  was  essential 
to  the  charm  of  Mr.  Emerson's  peculiar  style  of  thought 


EMERSON   THE   LECTURER.  379 

or  phrase.  The  first  lecture,  to  be  sure,  was  more  dis 
jointed  even  than  common.  It  was  as  if,  after  vainly 
trying  to  get  his  paragraphs  into  sequence  and  order,  he 
had  at  last  tried  the  desperate  expedient  of  shuffling 
them.  It  was  chaos  come  again,  but  it  was  a  chaos  full 
of  shooting-stars,  a  jumble  of  creative  forces.  The 
second  lecture,  on  "  Criticism  and  Poetry,"  was  quite  up 
to  the  level  of  old  times,  full  of  that  power  of  strangely  - 
subtle  association  whose  indirect  approaches  startle  the 
mind  into  almost  painful  attention,  of  those  flashes  of 
mutual  understanding  between  speaker  and  hearer  -that 
are  gone  ere  one  can  say  it  lightens.  The  vice  of  Em 
erson's  criticism  seems  to  be,  that  while  no  man  is  so 
sensitive  to  what  is  poetical,  few  men  are  less  sensible 
than  he  of  what  makes  a  poem.  He  values  the  solid 
meaning  of  thought  above  the  subtler  meaning  of  style. 
He  would  prefer  Donne,  I  suspect,  to  Spenser,  and  some 
times  mistakes  the  queer  for  the  original. 

To  be  young  is  surely  the  best,  if  the  most  precarious, 
gift  of  life ;  yet  there  are  some  of  us  who  would  hardly 
consent  to  be  young  again,  if  it  were  at  the  cost  of  our 
recollection  of  Mr.  Emerson's  first  lectures  during  the 
consulate  of  Van  Buren.  We  used  to  walk  in  from  the 
country  to  the  Masonic  Temple  (I  think  it  was),  through 
the  crisp  winter  night,  and  listen  to  that  thrilling  voice 
of  his,  so  charged  with  subtle  meaning  and  subtle  music, 
as  shipwrecked  men  on  a  raft  to  the  hail  of  a  ship  that 
came  with  unhoped-for  food  and  rescue.  Cynics  might 
say  what  they  liked.  Did  our  own  imaginations  trans 
figure  dry  remainder-biscuit  into  ambrosia]  At  any 
rate,  he  brought  us  life,  which,  on  the  whole,  is  no  bad 
thing.  Was  it  all  transcendentalism  ]  magic-lantern 
pictures  on  mist  1  As  you  will.  Those,  then,  were  just 
what  we  wanted.  But  it  was  not  so.  The  delight  and 
the  benefit  were  that  he  put  us  in  communication  with 


380  EMERSON  THE   LECTURER. 

a  larger  style  of  thought,  sharpened  our  wits  with  a 
more  pungent  phrase,  gave  us  ravishing  glimpses  of  an 
ideal  under  the  dry  husk  of  our  New  England  ;  made  us 
conscious  of  the  supreme  and  everlasting  originality  of 
whatever  bit  of  soul  might  be  in  any  of  us  ;  freed  us, 
in  short,  from  the  stocks  of  prose  in  Avhich  we  had  sat 
so  long  that  we  had  grown  wellnigh  contented  in  our 
cramps.  And  who  that  saw  the  audience  will  ever  for 
get  it,  where  every  one  still  capable  of  fire,  or  longing 
to  renew  in  them  the  half-forgotten  sense  of  it,. was 
gathered  1  Those  faces,  young  and  old,  agleam  with 
pale  intellectual  light,  eager  with  pleased  attention,  flash 
upon  me  once  more  from  the  deep  recesses  of  the  years 
with  an  exquisite  pathos.  Ah,  beautiful  young  eyes, 
brimming  with  love  and  hope,  wholly  vanished  now  in 
that  other  world  we  call  the  Past,  or  peering  doubtfully 
through  the  pensive  gloaming  of  memory,  your  light 
impoverishes  these  cheaper  days !  I  hear  again  that 
rustle  of  sensation,  as  they  turned  to  exchange  glances 
over  some  pithier  thought,  some  keener  flash  of  that 
humor  which  always  played  about  the  horizon  cf  his 
mind  like  heat-lightning,  and  it  seems  now  like  the  sad 
whisper  of  the  autumn  leaves  that  are  whirling  around 
me.  But  would  my  picture  be  complete  if  I  forgot  that 

ample  and  vegete  countenance  of  Mr.  R of  "W , 

—  how,  from  its  regular  post  at  the  corner  of  the  front 
bench,  it  turned  in  ruddy  triumph  to  the  profaner  audi 
ence  as  if  he  were  the  inexplicably  appointed  fugleman 
of  appreciation  ]  I  was  reminded  of  him  by  those  hearty 
cherubs  in  Titian's  Assumption  that  look  at  you  as  who 
should  say,  "  Did  you  ever  see  a  Madonna  like  that  ? 
Did  you  ever  behold  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of 
womanhood  mount  heavenward  before  like  a  rocket  1 " 

To  some  of  us  that  long-past  experience  remains  as  the 
most  marvellous  and  fruitful  we  have  ever  had.    Emerson 


EMERSON   THE   LECTURER.  381 

awakened  us,  saved  us  from,  the  body  of  this  death.  It 
is  the  sound  of  the  trumpet  that  the  young  soul  longs 
for,  careless  what  breath  may  fill  it.  Sidney  heard  it  in 
the  ballad  of  "  Chevy  Chase,"  and  we  in  Emerson.  Nor 
did  it  blow  retreat,  but  called  to  us  with  assurance  of 
victory.  Did  they  say  he  was  disconnected  ]  So  were 
the  stars,  that  seemed  larger  to  our  eyes,  still  keen  with 
that  excitement,  as  we  walked  homeward  with  prouder 
stride  over  the  creaking  snow.  And  were  they  not  knit 
together  by  a  higher  logic  than  our  mere  sense  could 
master  1  Were  we  enthusiasts  ]  I  hope  and  believe  we 
were,  and  am  thankful  to  the  man  who  made  us  worth 
something  for  once  in  our  lives.  If  asked  what  was  left  1 
what  \ve  carried  home  ]  we  should  not  have  been  careful 
for  an  answer.  It  would  have  been  enough  if  we  had 
said  that  something  beautiful  had  passed  that  way.  Or 
we  might  have  asked  in  return  wrhat  one  brought  away 
from  a  symphony  of  Beethoven  ]  Enough  that  he  had 
set  that  ferment  of  wholesome  discontent  at  work  in  us. 
There  is  one,  at  least,  of  those  old  hearers,  so  many  of 
whom  are  now  in  the  fruition  of  that  intellectual  beauty 
of  which  Emerson  gave  them  both  the  desire  and  the 
foretaste,  who  will  always  love  to  repeat :  — 

"  Che  in  la  mente  in'c  fitta,  ed  or  m'accuora 
La  cara  e  buona  immagine  paterna 
Di  voi,  quando  nel  mondo  ad  ora  ad  ora 
M'inseguavaste  come  1'norn  s'eterna," 

I  am  unconsciously  thinking,  as  I  write,  of  the  third 
lectiire  of  the  present  course,  in  which  Mr.  Emerson 
gave  some  delightful  reminiscences  of  the  intellectual 
influences  in  whose  movement  he  had  shared.  It  was 
like  hearing  Goethe  read  some  passages  of  the  "Wahr- 
heit  aus  seinem  Leben."  Not  that  there  was  not  a  little 
Dichtung,  too,  here  and  there,  as  the  lecturer  built  up 
so  lofty  a  pedestal  under  certain  figures  as  to  lift  them 


382  EMERSON  THE   LECTURER. 

into  a  prominence  of  obscurity,  and  seem  to  masthead 
them  there.  Everybody  was  asking  his  neighbor  who 
this  or  that  recondite  great  man  was,  in  the  faint  hope 
that  somebody  might  once  have  heard  of  him.  There 
are  those  Avho  call  Mr.  Emerson  cold.  Let  them  revise 
their  judgment  in  presence  of  this  loyalty  of  his  that 
can  keep  warm  for  half  a  century,  that  never  forgets  a 
friendship,  or  fails  to  pay  even  a  fancied  obligation  to 
the  uttermost  farthing.  This  substantiation  of  shadows 
was  but  incidental,  and  pleasantly  characteristic  of  the 
man  to  those  who  know  and  love  him.  The  greater  part 
of  the  lecture  was  devoted  to  reminiscences  of  things 
substantial  in  themselves.  He  spoke  of  Everett,  fresh 
from  Greece  and  Germany ;  of  Channing ;  of  the  trans 
lations  of  Margaret  Fuller,  Ripley,  and  Dwight ;  of  the 
Dial  and  Brook  Farm.  To  what  he  said  of  the  latter 
an  undertone  of  good-humored  irony  gave  special  zest. 
But  what  every  one  of  his  hearers  felt  was  that  the  pro 
tagonist  in  the  drama  was  left  out.  The  lecturer  was 
no  ^Eneas  to  babble  the  quorum  magna  pars  fui,  and,  as 
one  of  his  listeners,  I  cannot  help  wishing  to  say  how 
each  of  them  was  commenting  the  story  as  it  went  along, 
and  filling  up  the  necessary  gaps  in  it  from  his  own  pri 
vate  store  of  memories.  His  younger  hearers  could  not 
know  how  much  they  owed  to  the  benign  impersonality, 
the  quiet  scorn  of  everything  ignoble,  the  never-sated 
hunger  of  self-culture,  that  were  personified  in  the  man 
before  them.  But  the  older  knew  how  much  the  coun 
try's  intellectual  emancipation  was  due  to  the  stimulus 
of  his  teaching  and  example,  how  constantly  he  had  kept 
burning  the  beacon  of  an  ideal  life  above  our  lower 
region  of  turmoil.  To  him  more  than  to  all  other  causes 
together  did  the  young  martyrs  of  our  civil  war  owe  the 
siistaining  strength  of  thoughtful  heroism  that  is  so 
touching  in  every  record  of  their  lives.  Those  who  are 


EMERSON  THE   LECTURER.  383 

grateful  to  Mr.  Emerson,  as  many  of  us  are,  for  what 
they  feel  to  be  most  valuable  in  their  culture,  or  perhaps 
I  should  say  their  impulse,  are  grateful  not  so  much  for 
any  direct  teachings  of  his  as  for  that  inspiring  lift  which 
only  genius  can  give,  and  without  which  all  doctrine  is 
chaff. 

This  was  something  like  the  caret  which  some  of  us 
older  boys  wished  to  fill  up  on  the  margin  of  the  master's 
lecture.  Few  men  have  been  so  much  to  so  many,  and 
through  so  large  a  range  of  aptitudes  and  temperaments, 
and  this  simply  because  all  of  us  value  manhood  beyond 
any  or  all  other  qualities  of  character.  We  may  suspect 
in  him,  here  and  there,  a  certain  thinness  and  vagueness 
of  quality,  but  let  the  waters  go  over  him  as  they  list, 
this  masculine  fibre  of  his  will  keep  its  lively  color  and  its 
toughness  of  texture.  I  have  heard  some  great  speakers 
and  some  accomplished  orators,  but  never  any  that  so* 
moved  and  persuaded  men  as  he.  There  is  a  kind  of 
undertow  in  that  rich  baritone  of  his  that  sweeps  our 
minds  from  their  foothold  into  deeper  watei's  with  a 
drift  we  cannot  and  would  not  resist.  And  how  artfully 
(for  Emerson  is  a  long-studied  artist  in  these  things) 
does  the  deliberate  utterance,  that  seems  waiting  for  the 
fit  word,  appear  to  admit  us  partners  in  the  labor  of 
thought  and  make  us  feel  as  if  the  glance  of  humor  were 
a  sudden  suggestion,  as  if  the  perfect  phrase  lying  writ 
ten  there  on  the  desk  were  as  unexpected  to  him  as  to 
us  !  In  that  closely-filed  speech  of  his  at  the  Burns 
centenary  dinner  every  word  seemed  to  have  just  dropped 
down  to  him  from  the  clouds.  He  looked  far  away  over 
the  heads  of  his  hearers,  with  a  vague  kind  of  expecta 
tion,  as  into  some  private  heaven  of  invention,  and  the 
winged  period  came  at  last  obedient  to  his  spell.  "  My 
dainty  Ariel  ! "  he  seemed  murmuring  to  himself  as  he 
cast  down  his  eyes  as  if  in  deprecation  of  the  frenzy  of 


384  EMERSON   THE   LECTURER. 

approval  and  caught  another  sentence  from  the  Sibylline 
leaves  that  lay  before  him  ambushed  behind  a  dish  of 
fruit  and  seen  only  by  nearest  neighbors.  Every  sen 
tence  brought  down  the  house,  as  I  never  saw  one 
brought  down  before,  —  and  it  is  not  so  easy  to  hit  Scots 
men  with  a  sentiment  that  has  no  hint  of  native  brogue 
in  it.  I  watched,  for  it  was  an  interesting  study,  how 
the  quick  sympathy  ran  flashing  from  face  to  face  down 
the  long  tables,  like  an  electric  spark  thrilling  as  it  went, 
and  then  exploded  in  a  thunder  of  plaudits.  I  watched 
till  tables  and  faces  vanished,  for  I,  too,  found  myself 
caught  up  in  the  common  enthusiasm,  and  my  excited 
fancy  set  me  under  the  bema  listening  to  him  who  ful- 
mined  over  Greece.  I  can  never  help  applying  to  him 
what  Ben  Jonson  said  of  Bacon  :  "  There  happened  in 
my  time  one  noble  speaker,  who  was  full  of  gravity  in 
his  speaking.  His  language  was  nobly  censorious.  No 
man  ever  spake  more  neatly,  more  pressly,  more  weight 
ily,  or  suffered  less  emptiness,  less  idleness,  in  what  he 
uttered.  No  member  of  his  speech  but  consisted  of 
his  own  graces.  His  hearers  could  not  cough,  or  look 
aside  from  him,  without  loss.  He  commanded  where  he 
spoke."  Those  who  heard  him  while  their  natures  were 
yet  plastic,  and  their  mental  nerves  trembled  under  the 
slightest  breath  of  divine  air,  will  never  cease  to  feel 
and  say :  — 

"  Was  never  eye  did  see  that  face, 

Was  never  ear  did  hear  that  tongue, 
Was  never  mind  did  mind  his  grace, 
That  ever  thought  the  travail  long; 
But  eyes,  and  ears,  and  every  thought, 
Were  with  his  sweet  perfections  caught." 


POPE. 


IN  1675  Edward  Phillips,  the  elder  of  Milton's 
nephews,  published  his  Theatrum  Poetarum.  In  his 
Preface  and  elsewhere  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  he 
reflected  the  eesthetic  principles  and  literary  judgments 
of  his  now  illustrious  uncle,  who  had  died  in  obscurity 
the  year  before.*  The  great  poet  who  gave  to  English 
blank  verse  the  grandeur  and  compass  of  organ-music, 
and  who  in  his  minor  poems  kept  alive  the  traditions  of 
Fletcher  and  Shakespeare,  died  with  no  foretaste,  and 
yet  we  may  believe  as  confident  as  ever,  of  that  "  im 
mortality  of  fame  "  which  he  tells  his  friend  Diodati  he 
was  "  meditating  with  the  help  of  Heaven  "  in  his  youth. 
He  who  may  have  seen  Shakespeare,  who  doubtless  had 
seen  Fletcher,  and  who  perhaps  personally  knew  Jon- 
son,  f  lived  to  see  that  false  school  of  writers  whom  he 
qualified  as  "  good  rhymists,  but  no  poets,"  at  once  the 
idols  and  the  victims  of  the  taste  they  had  corrupted. 
As  he  saw,  not  without  scorn,  how  they  found  universal 
hearing,  while  he  slowly  won  his  audience  fit  though  few, 
did  he  ever  think  of  the  hero  of  his  own  epic  at  the  ear 
of  Eve  1  It  is  not  impossible ;  but  however  that  may 
be,  he  sowed  in  his  nephew's  book  the  dragon's  teeth  of 
that  long  war  which,  after  the  lapse  of  a  century  and  a 

*  This  was  Thomas  Warton's  opinion. 

t  Milton,  a  London  boy,  was  in  his  eighth,  seventeenth,  and  twenty- 
ninth  years,  respectively,  when  Shakespeare  (1616),  Fletcher  (1625), 
and  B.  Jonson  (1637)  died. 

17  T 


386  POPE. 

half,  was  to  end  in  the  expulsion  of  the  usurping  dynasty 
and  the  restoration  of  the  ancient  and  legitimate  race 
whose  claim  rested  on  the  grace  of  God.  In  the  follow 
ing  passage  surely  the  voice  is  Milton's,  though  the  hand 
be  that  of  Phillips  :  "  Wit,  ingenuity,  and  learning  in 
verse,  even  elegancy  itself,  though  that  comes  nearest, 
are  one  thing ;  true  native  poetry  is  another,  in  which 
there  is  a  certain  air  and  spirit,  which,  perhaps,  the 
most  learned  and  judicious  in  other  arts  do  not  perfectly 
apprehend ;  much  less  is  it  attainable  by  any  art  or 
study."  The  man  who  speaks  of  elegancy  as  coming 
nearest,  certainly  shared,  if  he  was  not  repeating,  the 
opinions  of  him  who  thirty  years  before  had  said  that 
"  decorum "  (meaning  a  higher  or  organic  unity)  was 
"  the  grand  masterpiece  to  observe  "  in  poetry.* 

It  is  upon  this  text  of  Phillips  (as  Chalmers  has  re 
marked)  that  Joseph  Warton  bases  his  classification  of 
poets  in  the  dedication  to  Young  of  the  first  volume  of 
his  essay  on  the  Genius  and  Writings  of  Pope,  published 
in  1756.  That  was  the  earliest  public  and  official  dec 
laration  of  war  against  the  reigning  mode,  though  pri 
vate  hostilities  and  reprisals  had  been  going  on  for  some 
time.  Addison's  panegyric  of  Milton  in  the  Spectator 
was  a  criticism,  not  the  less  damaging  because  indirect, 
of  the  superficial  poetry  then  in  vogue.  His  praise  of 
the  old  ballads  condemned  by  innuendo  the  artificial 
elaboration  of  the  drawing-room  pastoral  by  contrasting 
it  with  the  simple  sincerity  of  nature.  Himself  inca 
pable  of  being  natural  except  in  prose,  he  had  an  in 
stinct  for  the  genuine  virtues  of  poetry  as  sure  as  that 
of  Gray.  Thomson's  "  Winter  "  (1 726)  was  a  direct  pro 
test  against  the  literature  of  Good  Society,  going  as  it 
did  to  prove  that  the  noblest  society  was  that  of  one's 
own  mind  heightened  by  the  contemplation  of  outward 
*  In  his  Tractate  on  Education. 


POPE.  387 

nature.  What  Thomson's  poetical  creed  was  may  be 
surely  inferred  from  his  having  modelled  his  two  prin 
cipal  poems  on  Milton  and  Spenser,  ignoring  j-hyme 
altogether  in  the  "Seasons,"  and  in  the  "Castle  of 
Indolence "  rejecting  the  stiff  mould  of  the  couplet. 
In  1744  came  Akenside's  "Pleasures  of  Imagination," 
whose  very  title,  like  a  guide-post,  points  away  from  the 
level  highway  of  commonplace  to  mountain-paths  and 
less  domestic  prospects.  The  poem  was  stiff  and  unwil 
ling,  but  in  its  loins  lay  the  seed  of  nobler  births,  and 
without  it  the  "  Lines  written  at  Tintern  Abbey  "  might 
never  have  been.  Three  years  later  Collins  printed  his 
little  volume  of  Odes,  advocating  in  theory  and  ex 
emplifying  in  practice  the  natural  supremacy  of  the 
imagination  (though  he  called  it  by  its  older  name  of 
fancy)  as  a  test  to  distinguish  poetry  from  verse-making. 
The  whole  Romantic  School,  in  its  germ,  no  doubt,  but 
yet  unmistakably  foreshadowed,  lies  already  in  the 
"Ode  on  the  Superstitions  of  the  Highlands."  He 
was  the  first  to  bring  back  into  poetry  something  of  the 
antique  fervor,  and  found  again  the  long-lost  secret  of 
being  classically  elegant  without  being  pedantically  cold. 
A  skilled  lover  of  music,*  he  rose  from  the  general 
sing-song  of  his  generation  to  a  harmony  that  had  been 
silent  since  Milton,  and  in  him,  to  use  his  own  words, 

"  The  force  of  energy  is  found, 
And  the  sense  rises  on  the  wings  of  sound." 

But  beside  his  own  direct  services  in  the  reformation 
of  our  poetry,  we  owe  him  a  still  greater  debt  as  the 
inspirer  of  Gray,  whose  "  Progress  of  Poesy,"  in  reach, 
variety,  and  loftiness  of  poise,  overflies  all  other  Eng 
lish  lyrics  like  an  eagle.  In  spite  of  the  dulness  of  con 
temporary  ears,  preoccupied  with  the  continuous  hum 

*  Milton,  Collins,  and  Gray,  our  three  great  masters  of  harmony, 
•were  all  musicians. 


388  POPE. 

of  the  popular  hurdy-gurdy,  it  was  the  prevailing  blast 
of  Gray's  trumpet  that  more  than  anything  else  called 
men  back  to  the  legitimate  standard.*  Another  poet, 
Dyer,  whose  "Fleece "was  published  in  1753,  both  in 
the  choice  of  his  subject  and  his  treatment  of  it  gives 
further  proof  of  the  tendency  among  the  younger  gen 
eration  to  revert  to  simpler  and  purer  models.  Plainly 

*  Wordsworth,  who  recognized  forerunners  in  Thomson,  Collins, 
Dyer,  and  Burns,  and  who  chimes  in  with  the  popular  superstition 
about  Chatterton,  is  always  somewhat  niggardly  in  his  appreciation 
of  Gray.  Yet  he  owed  him  not  a  little.  Without  Gray's  tune  in  his 
ears,  his  own  noblest  Ode  would  have  missed  the  varied  modulation 
which  is  one  of  its  main  charms.  Where  he  forgets  Gray,  his  verse 
sinks  to  something  like  the  measure  of  a  jig.  Perhaps  the  suggestion 
of  one  of  his  own  finest  lines, 

("  The  light  that  never  was  on  land  or  sea,") 
was  due  to  Gray's 

"  Orient  hues  unborrowed  of  the  sun." 

I  believe  it  has  not  been  noticed  that  among  the  verses  in  Gray's 
"  Sonnet  on  the  Death  of  West,"  which  Wordsworth  condemns  as  of 
no  value,  the  second  — 

"  And  reddening  Phoabus  lifts  his  golden  fires  "  — 

is  one  of  Gray's  happy  reminiscences  from  a  poet  in  some  respects 
greater  than  either  of  them :  — 

Jamque  rubrum  tremulis  jubar  ignilus  erigere  alte 
Cum  cceptat  natura. 

LfCRET.,  iv.  404,  405. 

Gray's  taste  was  a  sensitive  divining-rod  of  the  sources  whether  of 
pleasing  or  profound  emotion  in  poetry.  Though  he  prized  pomp,  he 
did  not  undervalue  simplicity  of  subject  or  treatment,  if  only  the 
witch  Imagination  had  cast  her  spell  there.  Wordsworth  loved  soli 
tude  in  his  appreciations  as  well  as  in  his  daily  life,  and  was  the 
readier  to  find  merit  in  obscurity,  because  it  gave  him  the  pleasure  of 
being  a  first  discoverer  all  by  himself.  Thus  he  addresses  a  sonnet  to 
John  Dyef.  But  Gray  was  one  of  "  the  pure  and  powerful  minds  " 
who  had  discovered  Dyer  during  his  lifetime,  when  the  discovery  of 
poets  is  more  difficult.  In  1753  he  writes  to  Walpole:  "Mr.  Dyer  has 
more  poetry  in  his  imagination  than  almost  any  of  our  number,  but 
rough  and  injudicious."  Dyer  has  one  fine  verse, — 

"  On  the  dark  level  of  adversity." 


POPE.  389 

enough,  Thomson   had  been  his  chief  model,  though 
there  are  also  traces  of  a  careful  study  of  Milton. 

Pope  had  died  in  1744,  at  the  height  of  his  renown, 
the  acknowledged  monarch  of  letters,  as  supreme  as  Vol 
taire  when  the  excitement  and  exposure  of  his  corona 
tion-ceremonies  at  Paris  hastened  his  end  a  generation 
later.  His  fame,  like  Voltaire's,  was  European,  and  the 
style  which  he  had  carried  to  perfection  was  paramount 
throughout  the  cultivated  world.  The  new  edition  of 
the  "  Dunciad,"  with  the  Fourth  Book  added,  published 
the  year  before  his  death,  though  the  substitution  of 
Gibber  for  Theobald  made  the  poem  incoherent,  had  yet 
increased  his  reputation  and  confirmed  the  sway  of  the 
school  whose  recognized  head  he  was,  by  the  poignancy 
of  its  satire,  the  lucidity  of  its  wit,  and  the  resounding, 
if  somewhat  uniform  march,  of  its  numbers.  He  had 
been  translated  into  other  languages  living  and  dead. 
Voltaire  had  long  before  pronounced  him  "the  best  poet 
of  England,  and  at  present  of  all  the  world."  *  It  was 
the  apotheosis  of  clearness,  point,  and  technical  skill,  of 
the  ease  that  comes  of  practice,  not  of  the  fulness  of 
original  power.  And  yet,  as  we  have  seen,  while  he  was 
in  the  very  plenitude  of  his  power,  there  was  already  a 
widespread  discontent,  a  feeling  that  what  "  comes  near 
est,"  as  Phillips  calls  it,  may  yet  be  infinitely  far  from 
giving  those  profounder  and  incalculable  satisfactions  of 
which  the  soul  is  capable  in  poetry.  A  movement  was 
gathering  strength  which  prompted 

.  "  The  age  to  quit  their  clogs 
By  the  known  rules  of  virtuous  liberty." 

Nor  was  it  wholly  confined  to  England.     Symptoms  of  a 
similar  reaction  began  to  show  themselves  on  the  Conti- 

*  MS.  letter  of  Voltaire,  cited  by  Warburton  in  his  edition  of  Pope, 
Vol.  IV.  p.  38,  note.  The  date  is'  15th  October,  1726.  1  do  not  find 
it  in  Voltaire's  Correspondence. 


390  POPE. 

nent,  notably  in  the  translation  of  Milton  (1732)  and  the 
publication  of  the  Nibdungen  Lied  (1757)  by  Bodmer, 
and  the  imitations  of  Thomson  in  France.  ~\Vas  it  pos 
sible,  then,  that  there  was  anything  better  than  good 
sense,  elegant  diction,  and  the  highest  polish  of  style  \ 
'  Could  there  be  an  intellectual  appetite  which  antithesis 
failed  to  satisfy!  If  the  horse  would  only  have  faith 
enough  in  his  green  spectacles,  surely  the  straw  would 
acquire,  not  only  the  flavor,  but  the  nutritious  proper 
ties  of  fresh  grass.  The  horse  was  foolish  enough  to 
starve,  but  the  public  is  wiser.  It  is  surprising  how  pa 
tiently  it  will  go  on,  for  generation  after  generation, 
transmuting  dry  stubble  into  verdure  in  this  fashion. 

The  school  which  Boileau  founded  was  critical  and  not 
creative.  It  was  limited,  not  only  in  its  essence,  but  by 
the  capabilities  of  the  French  language  and  by  the  natu 
ral  bent  of  the  French  mind,  which  finds  a  predominant 
satisfaction  in  phrases  if  elegantly  turned,  and  can  make 
a  despotism,  political  or  aesthetic,  palatable  with  the  pep 
per  of  epigram.  The  style  of  Louis  XIV.  did  what  his 
armies  failed  to  do.  It  overran  and  subjugated  Europe. 
It  struck  the  literature  of  imagination  with  palsy,  and 
it  is  droll  enough  to  see  Voltaire,  after  he  had  got  some 
knowledge  of  Shakespeare,  continually  endeavoring  to  re 
assure  himself  about  the  poetry  of  the  grand  siecle,  and 
all  the  time  asking  himself,  "  Why,  in  the  name  of  all 
the  gods  at  once,  is  this  not  the  real  thing ! "  He  seems 
to  have  felt  that  there  was  a  dreadful  mistake  somewhere, 
when  poetry  must  be  called  upon  to  prove  itself  inspired, 
above  all  when  it  must  demonstrate  that  it  is  interesting, 
all  appearances  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.  Diffi 
culty,  according  to  Voltaire,  is  the  tenth  Muse ;  but  how 
if  there  were  difficulty  in  reading  as  well  as  writing  ?  It 
was  something,  at  any  rate,  which  an  increasing  number 
of  persons  were  perverse  enough  to  feel  in  attempting 


POPE.  391 

the  productions  of  a  pseudo-classicism,  the  classicism  of 
red  heels  and  periwigs.  Even  poor  old  Dennis  himself 
had  arrived  at  a  kind  of  muddled  notion  that  artifice  was 
not  precisely  art,  that  there  were  depths  in  human  nature 
which  the  most  perfectly  manufactured  line  of  five  feet 
could  not  sound,  and  passionate  elations  that  could  not 
be  tuned  to  the  lullaby  seesaw  of  the  couplet.  The  sat 
isfactions  of  a  conventional  taste  were  very  well  in  their 
own  way,  but  were  they,  after  all,  the  highest  of  which 
men  were  capable  who  had  obscurely  divined  the  Greeks, 
and  who  had  seen  Hamlet,  Lear,  and  Othello  upon  the 
stage  1  Was  not  poetry,  then,  something  which  delivered 
us  from  the  dungeon  of  actual  life,  instead  of  basely 
reconciling  us  with  it  ] 

A  century  earlier  the  school  of  the  cultists  had  estab 
lished  a  dominion,  ephemeral,  as  it  soon  appeared,  but 
absolute  while  it  lasted.  Du  Bartas,  who  may,  perhaps, 
as  fairly  as  any,  lay  claim  to  its  paternity,*  had  been 
called  divine,  and  similar  honors  had  been  paid  in  turn 
to  Gongora,  Lilly,  and  Marini,  who  were  in  the  strictest 
sense  contemporaneous.  The  infection  of  mere  fashion 
will  hardly  account  satisfactorily  for  a  vogue  so  sudden 
and  so  widely  extended.  It  may  well  be  suspected  that 
there  was  some  latent  cause,  something  at  work  more 
potent  than  the  fascinating  mannerism  of  any  single  au 
thor  in  the  rapid  and  almost  simultaneous  diffusion  of 
this  purely  cutaneous  eruption.  It  is  not  improbable 
that,  in  the  revival  of  letters,  men  whose  native  tongues 
had  not  yet  attained  the  precision  and  grace  only  to 
be  acquired  by  long  literary  usage,  should  have  learned 
from  a  study  of  the  Latin  poets  to  value  the  form  above 

*  Its  taste  for  verbal  affectations  is  to  be  found  in  the  Roman  de  la 
Rose,  and  (yet  more  absurdly  forced)  in  Gauthier  de  Coinsy;  but  in 
Du  Bartas  the  research  of  effect  not  seldom  subjugates  the  thought  as 
well  as  the  phrase. 


392  POPE. 

the  substance,  and  to  seek  in  mere  words  a  conjuring 
property  which  belongs  to  them  only  when  they  catch 
life  and  meaning  from  profound  thought  or  powerful 
emotion.  Yet  this  very  devotion  to  expression  at  the 
expense  of  everything  else,  though  its  excesses  were  fatal 
to  the  innovators  who  preached  and  practised  it,  may 
not  have  been  without  good  results  in  refining  language 
and  fitting  it  for  the  higher  uses  to  which  it  was  des 
tined.  The  cultists  went  down  before  the  implacable 
good  sense  of  French  criticism,  but  the  defect  of  this 
criticism  was  that  it  ignored  imagination  altogether,  suid 
sent  Nature  about  her  business  as  an  impertinent  bag 
gage  whose  household  loom  competed  unlawfully  with 
the  machine-made  fabrics,  so  exquisitely  uniform  in  pat 
tern,  of  the  royal  manufactories.  There  is  more  than  a 
fanciful  analogy  between  the  style  which  Pope  brought 
into  vogue  and  that  which  for  a  time  bewitched  all  ears 
in  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century.  As  the  mas 
ter  had  made  it  an  axiom  to  avoid  what  was  mean  or 
low,  so  the  disciples  endeavored  to  escape  from  what  was 
common.  This  they  contrived  by  the  ready  expedient 
of  the  periphrasis.  They  called  everything  something 
else.  A  boot  with  them  was 

"  The  shining  leather  that  encased  the  limb  " ; 
coffee  became 

"  The  fragrant  juice  of  Mocha's  berry  brown"; 

and  they  were  as  liberal  of  epithets  as  a  royal  christen 
ing  of  proper  names.  Two  in  every  verse,  one  to  bal 
ance  the  other,  was  the  smallest  allowance.  Here  are 
four  successive  verses  from  "  The  Vanity  of  Human 
Wishes  "  :  - 

"  The  encumbered  oar  scarce  leaves  the  dreaded  coast 

Through  purple  billows  and  a.  floating  host. 
•  The  bold  Bavarian  in  a  luckless  hour 

Tries  the  dread  summits  of  Ccesarian  power." 


POPE.  393 

This  fashion  perished  also  by  its  own  excess,  but  the 
criticism  which  laid  at  the  door  of  the  master  all  the 
faults  of  his  pupils  was  unjust.  It  was  defective,  more 
over,  in  overlooking  how  much  of  what  we  call  natural 
is  an  artificial  product,  above  all  in  forgetting  that  Pope 
had  one  of  the  prime  qualities  of  a  great  poet  in  exactly 
answering  the  intellectual  needs  of  the  age  in  which  he 
lived,  and  in  reflecting  its  lineaments.  He  did  in  some 
not  inadequate  sense  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature.  His 
poetry  is  not  a  mountain-tarn,  like  that  of  Wordsworth ; 
it  is  not  in  sympathy  with  the  higher  moods  of  the 
mind;  yet  it  continues  entertaining,  in  spite  of  all 
changes  of  mode.  It  was  a  mirror  in  a  drawing-room, 
but  it  gave  back  a  faithful  image  of  society,  powdered 
and  rouged,  to  be  sure,  and  intent  on  trifles,  yet  still  as 
human  in  its  own  way  as  the  heroes  of  Homer  in  theirs. 
For  the  popularity  of  Pope,  as  for  that  of  Marini  and 
his  sect,  circumstances  had  prepared  the  way.  English 
literature  for  half  a  century  after  the  Restoration  showed 
the  mai'ks  both  of  a  moral  reaction  and  of  an  artistic 
vassalage  to  France.  From  the  comp*ulsory  saintship 
and  cropped  hair  of  the  Puritans  men  rushed  or  sneaked, 
as  their  temperaments  dictated,  to  the  opposite  cant  of 
sensuality  and  a  wilderness  of  periwig.  Charles  II.  had 
brought  back  with  him  from  exile  French  manners, 
French  morals,  and  above  all  French  taste.  Misfortune 
makes  a  shallow  mind  sceptical.  It  had  made  the  king 
so  ;  and  this,  at  a  time  when  court  patronage  was  the 
main  sinew  of  authorship,  was  fatal  to  the  higher  quali 
ties  of  literature.  That  Charles  should  have  preferred 
the  stately  decorums  of  the  French  school,  and  should 
have  mistaken  its  polished  mannerism  for  style,  was 
natural  enough.  But  there  was  something  also  in  the 
texture  of  the  average  British  mind  which  prepared  it 
for  this  subjugation  from  the  other  side  of  tho  Channel. 
17* 


394  POPE. 

No  observer  of  men  can  have  failed  to  notice  the  clumsy 
respect  which  the  understanding  pays  to  elegance  of 
manner  and  savoir-faire,  nor  what  an  awkward  sense  of 
inferiority  it  feels  in  the  presence  of  an  accomplished 
worldliuess.  The  code  of  society  is  stronger  with  most 
persons  than  that  of  Sinai,  and  many  a  man  who  would 
not  scruple  to  thrust  his  fingers  in  his  neighbor's  pocket 
would  forego  green  peas  rather  than  use  his  knife  as  a 
shovel.  The  submission  with  which  the  greater  number 
surrender  their  natural  likings  for  tKe  acquired  taste  of 
what  for  the  moment  is  called  the  World  is  a  highly 
curious  phenomenon,  and,  however  destructive  of  origi 
nality,  is  the  main  safeguard  of  society  and  nurse  of 
civility.  Any  one  who  has  witnessed  the  torments  of  an 
honest  citizen  in  a  foreign  gallery  before  some  hideous 
martyrdom  which  he  feels  it  his  duty  to  admire,  though 
it  be  hateful  to  him  as  nightmare,  may  well  doubt 
whether  the  gridiron  of  the  saint  were  hotter  than  that  of 
the  sinner.  It  is  only  a  great  mind  or  a  strong  charac 
ter  that  knows  how  to  respect  its  own  provincialism  and 
can  dare  to  be*in  fashion  with  itself.  The  bewildered 
clown  with  his  "  Am  I  Giles  1  or  am  I  not  1 "  was  but  a 
type  of  the  average  man  who  finds  himself  \miformed, 
drilled,  and  keeping  step,  whether  he  will  or  no,  with 
the  company  into  which  destiny  or  chance  has  drafted 
him,  and  which  is  marching  him  inexorably  away  from 
everything  that  made  him  comfortable. 

The  insularity  of  England,  while  it  fostered  pride  and 
reserve,  entailed  also  that  sensitiveness  to  ridicule  which 
haunts  pride  like  an  evil  genius.  "  The  English,"  says 
Barclay,  writing  half  a  century  before  the  Restoration, 
"have  for  the  most  part  grave  minds  and  withdrawn, 
as  it  were,  into  themselves  for  counsel ;  they  won 
derfully  admire  themselves  and  the  manners,  genius, 
and  spirit  of  their  own  nation.  In  salutation  or  in 


POPE.  395 

•writing  they  endure  not  (unless  haply  imbued  with  for 
eign  manners)  to  descend  to  those  words  of  imaginary 
servitude  which  the  refinement  (blandities)  of  ages  hath 
invented."  *  Yet  their  fondness  of  foreign  fashions  had 
long  been  the  butt  of  native  satirists.  Every  one  re 
members  Portia's  merry  picture  of  the  English  lord  : 
'•'  How  oddly  he  is  suited  !  I  think  he  bought  his  doub 
let  in  Italy,  his  round  hose  in  France,  his  bonnet  in 
Germany,  and  his  behavior  everywhere."  But  while 
she  laughs  at  his  bungling  efforts  to  make  himself  a  cos* 
mopolite  in  externals,  she  hints  at  the  persistency  of 
his  inward  Anglicism  :  "  He  hath  neither  Latin,  French, 
nor  Italian."  In  matters  of  taste  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind 
seems  always  to  have  felt  a  painful  distrust  of  itself, 
which  it  betrays  either  in  an  affectation  of  burly  con 
tempt  or  in  a  pretence  of  admiration  equally  insincere. 
The  young  lords  who  were  to  make  the  future  court  of 
Charles  II.  no  doubt  found  in  Paris  an  elegance  beside 
which  the  homely  bluntness  of  native  manners  seemed 
rustic  and  underbred.  They  frequented  a  theatre  where 
propriety  was  absolute  upon  the  stage,  though  license 
had  its  full  swing  behind  the  scenes.  They  brought 
home  with  them  to  England  debauched  morals  and 
that  urbane  discipline  of  manners  which  is  so  agree 
able  a  substitute  for  discipline  of  mind.  The  word 
"  genteel  "  came  back  with  them,  an  outward  symptom 
of  the  inward  change.  In  the  last  generation,  the  men 
whose  great  aim  was  success  in  the  Other  World  had 
wrought  a  political  revolution ;  now,  those  whose  ideal 
was  prosperity  in  This  World  were  to  have  their  turn 
and  to  accomplish  with  their  lighter  weapons  as  great  a 
change.  Before  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
John  Bull  was  pretty  well  persuaded,  in  a  bewildered 
kind  of  way,  that  he  had  been  vulgar,  and  especially 

*  Barclaii  Salyricon,  p.  382.    Barclay  had  lived  in  France. 


396  POPE. 

that  his  efforts  in  literature  showed  marks  of  native  vig 
or,  indeed,  but  of  a  vigor  clownish  and  \incouth.  He 
began  to  be  ashamed  of  the  provincialism  which  had 
given  strength,  if  also  something  of  limitation,  to  his 
character. 

Waller,  who  spent  a  whole  summer  in  polishing  the 
life  out  of  ten  lines  to  be  written  in  the  Tasso  of  the 
Duchess  of  York,  expresses  the  prevailing  belief  as  re 
garded  poetry  in  the  prologue  to  his  "  improvement "  of 
the  "  Maid's  Tragedy  "  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  He 
made  the  play  reasonable,  as  it  was  called,  and  there  is 
a  pleasant  satire  in  the  fact  that  it  was  refused  a  license 
because  there  was  an  immoral  king  in  it.  On  the  throne, 
to  be  sure,  —  but  on  the  stage  !  Forbid  it,  decency  ! 

"  Above  our  neighbors'  our  conceptions  :ire, 
But  faultless  writing  is  the  effect  of  care; 
Our  lines  reformed,  and  not  composed  in  haste, 
Polished  like  marble,  would  like  marble  last. 

Were  we  but  less  indulgent  to  our  fau'ts, 
And  patience  had  to  cultivate  our  thoughts, 
Our  Muse  would  flourish,  and  a  nobler  rage 
Would  honor  this  than  did  the  Grecian  stage." 

It  is  a  curious  comment  on  these  verses  in  favor  of  care 
ful  writing,  that  Waller  should  have  failed  even  to  ex 
press  his  own  meaning  either  clearly  or  with  propriety. 
He  talks  of  "  cultivating  our  thoughts,"  when  he  means 
"pruning  our  style"  ;  he  confounds  the  Muse  with  the 
laurel,  or  at  any  rate  makes  her  a  plant,  and  then  goes 
on  with  perfect  equanimity  to  tell  us  that  a  nobler 
"rage"  (that  is,  madness)  than  that  of  Greece  would 
follow  the  horticultural  devices  he  recommends.  It 
never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  Waller  that  it  is  the 
substance  of  what  you  polish,  and  not  the  polish  itself, 
that  insures  duration.  Dryden,  in  his  rough-and-ready 
way,  has  hinted  at  this  in  his  verses  to  Congreve  on  the 


POPE.  397 

"  Double  Dealer."  He  begins  by  stating  the  received 
theory  about  the  improvement  of  English  literature  un 
der  the  new  regime,  but  the  thin  ice  of  sophistry  over 
which  Waller  had  glided  smoothly  gives  way  under  his 
greater  weight,  and  he  finds  himself  in  deep  water  ere 
he  is  aware. 

"  Well,  then,  the  promised  hour  has  come  at  last. 
The  present  age  in  wit  obscures  the  past; 
Strong  were  our  sires,  and  ns  they  fought  they  writ, 
Conquering  with  force  of  arm  *  and  dint  of  wit. 
Theirs  was  the  giant  race  before  the  Flood; 
And  thus  when  Charles  returned  our  Empire  stood; 
Like  Janus  he  the  stubborn  soil  manured, 
With  rules  of  husbandry  the  rankness  cured, 
Tamed  us  to  manners  when  the  stage  was  rude, 
And  boisterous  English  wit  with  art  endued; 
Our  age  was  cultivated  thus  at  length, 
But  what  we  gained  in  skill  we  lost  in  strength  ,- 
Our  builders  were  with  want  of  genius  curst, 
The  second  temple  was  not  like  the  first." 

There  would  seem  to  be  a  manifest  reminiscence  of 
Waller's  verse  in  the  half-scornful  emphasis  which  Dry- 
den  lays  on  "  cultivated."  Perhaps  he  was  at  first  led  to 
give  greater  weight  to  correctness  and  to  the  restraint 
of  arbitrary  rules  from  a  consciousness  that  he  had  a 
tendency  to  hyperbole  and  extravagance.  But  he  after 
wards  became  convinced  that  the  heightening  of  dis 
course  by  passion  was  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
exaggeration  which  heaps  phrase  on  phrase,  and  that 
genius,  like  beauty,  can  always  plead  its  pri^ege.  Dry- 
den,  by  his  powerful  example,  by  the  charm  of  his  verse 
which  combines  vigor  and  fluency  in  a  measure  perhaps 
never  reached  by  any  other  of  our  poets,  and  above  all 
because  it  is  never  long  before  the  sunshine  of  his  cheer 
ful  good  sense  breaks  through  the  clouds  of  rhetoric, 

*  Usually  printed  arms,  but  Dryden  certainly  wrote  arm,  to  corre 
spond  with  dint,  which  he  used  in  its  old  meaning  of  a  downright 
blow. 


398  POPE. 

and  gilds  the  clipped  hedges  over  which  his  thought 
clambers  like  an  impruned  vine,  —  Dryden,  one  of  the 
most  truly  English  of  English  authors,  did  more  than 
all  others  combined  to  bring  about  the  triumphs  of 
French  standards  in  taste  and  French  principles  in  crit 
icism.  But  he  was  always  like  a  deserter  who  cannot 
feel  happy  in  the  victories  of  the  alien  arms,  and  who 
would  go  back  if  he  could  to  the  camp  where  he  natu 
rally  belonged.  Between  1660  and  1700  more  French 
words,  I  believe,  were  directly  transplanted  into  our 
language  than  in  the  century  and  a  half  since.  What 
was  of  more  consequence,  French  ideas  came  with  them, 
shaping  the  form,  and  through  that  modifying  the  spirit, 
of  our  literature. 

Voltaire,  though  he  came  later,  was  steeped  in  the 
theories  of  art  which  had  been  inherited  as  traditions 
of  classicism  from  the  preceding  generation.  He  had 
lived  in  England,  and,  I  have  no  doubt,  gives  us  a  very 
good  notion  of  the  tone  which  was  prevalent  there  in 
his  time,  an  English  version  of  the  criticism  imported 
from  France.  He  tells  us  that  Mr.  Addison  was  the 
first  Englishman  who  had  written  a  reasonable  tragedy. 
And  in  spite  of  the  growling  of  poor  old  Dennis,  whose 
sandy  pedantry  was  not  without  an  oasis  of  refreshing 
sound  judgment  here  and  there,  this  was  the  opinion  of 
most  persons  at  that  day,  except,  it  may  be  suspected, 
the  judicious  and  modest  Mr.  Addison  himself.  Vol 
taire  says  wF  the  English  tragedians,  —  and  it  will  be 
noticed  that  he  is  only  putting,  in  another  way,  the 
opinion  of  Dryden,  —  "  Their  productions,  almost  all 
barbarous,  without  polish,  order,  or  'probability,  have 
astonishing  gleams  in  the  midst  of  their  night ;  .  .  .  . 
it  seems  sometimes  that  nature  is  not  made  in  England 
as  it  is  elsewhere."  Eh  bien,  the  inference  is  that  we 
must  try  and  make  it  so  !  The  world  must  be  uniform 


POPE.  399 

in  order  to  be  comfortable,  and  what  fashion  so  becom 
ing  as  the  one  we  have  invented  in  Paris  ?  It  is  not  a 
little  amusing  that  when  Voltaire  played  master  of  cer 
emonies  to  introduce  the  bizarre  Shakespeare  among  his 
countrymen,  that  other  kind  of  nature  made  a  profound- 
er  impression  on  them  than  quite  pleased  him.  So  he 
turned  about  presently  and  called  his  whilome  protege  a 
buffoon. 

The  condition  of  the  English  mind  at  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century  was  such  as  to  make  it  particularly 
sensitive  to  the  magnetism  which  streamed  to  it  from 
Paris.  The  loyalty  of  everybody  both  in  politics  and 
religion  had  been  put  out  of  joint.  A  generation  of 
materialists,  by  the  natural  rebound  which  inevitably 
follows  over-tension,  was  to  balance  the  ultra-spiritualism 
of  the  Puritans.  •As  always  when  a  political  revolution 
has  been  wrought  by  moral  agencies,  the  plunder  had 
fallen  mainly  to  the  share  of  the  greedy,  selfish,  and  un- 
scrupuloxis,  whose  disgusting  cant  had  given  a  taint  of 
hypocrisy  to  piety  itself.  Religion,  from  a  burning  con 
viction  of  the  soul,  had  grown  to  be  with  both  parties  a 
political  badge,  as  little  typical  of  the  inward  man  as 
the  scallop  of  a  pilgrim.  Sincerity  is  impossible,  unless 
it  pervade  the  whole  being,  and  the  pretence  of  it  saps 
the  very  foundation  of  character.  There  seems  to  have 
been  an  universal  scepticism,  and  in  its  worst  form, 
that  is,  with  an  outward  conformity  in  the  interest  of 
decorum  and  order.  There  was  an  unbelief  that  did 
not  believe  even  in  itself. 

The  difference  between  the  leading  minds  of  the 
former  age  and  that  which  was  supplanting  it  went  to 
the  very  roots  of  the  soul.  Milton  was  willing  to  peril 
the  success  of  his  crowning  work  by  making  the  poetry 
of  it  a  stalking-horse  for  his  theological  convictions. 
What  was  that  Fame 


400  POPE. 

"  Which  the  clear  spirit  doth  raise 
To  scorn  delights  and  live  laborious  days," 

to  the  crown  of  a  good  preacher  who  sets 

"  The  hearts  of  men  on  fire 
To  scorn  the  sordid  world  and  unto  heaven  aspire  "  ? 

Dean  Swift,  who  aspired  to  the  mitre,  could  write  a 
book  whose  moral,  if  it  had  any,  was  that  one  religion 
was  as  good  as  another,  since  all  were  political  devices, 
and  accepted  a  cure  of  souls  when  it  was  more  than 
doubtful  whether  he  believed  that  his  fellow-creatures 
had  any  souls  to  be  saved,  or,  if  they  had,  whether  they 
were  worth  saving.  The  answer  which  Pulci's  Margutte 
makes  to  Morgante,  when  asked  if  he  believed  in  Christ 
or  Mahomet,  would  have  expressed  well  enough  the 
creed  of  the  majority  of  that  generation  :  — 

"  To  tell  th^l  truly, 

My  faith  in  black 's  no  greater  than  in  azure, 
But  I  believe  in  capons,  roast-meat,  bouilli, 
And  in  good  wine  my  faith 's  beyond  all  measure."  * 

It  was  a  carnival  of  intellect  without  faith,  when  men 
could  be  Protestunt  or  Catholic,  both  at  once,  or  by 
turns,  or  neither,  as  suited  their  interest,  when  they 
could  swear  one  allegiance  and  keep  on  safe  terms  with 
the  other,  when  prime  ministers  and  commanders-in- 
chief  could  be  intelligencers  of  the  Pretender,  nay, 
when  even  Algernon  Sidney  himself  could  be  a  pen 
sioner  of  France.  What  morality  there  was,  was  the 
morality  of  appearances,  of  the  side  that  is  turned 
toward  men  and  not  toward  God.  The  very  shameless- 
ness  of  Congreve  is  refreshing  in  that  age  of  sham. 

It  was  impossible  that  anything  truly  great,  that  is, 
great  on  the  moral  and  emotional  as  well  as  the  intellec 
tual  side,  should  be  produced  by  such  a  generation. 
But  something  intellectually  great  could  be  and  was. 

*  Morgante,  xviii.  115. 


POPE.  401 

The  French  mind,  always  stronger  in  perceptive  and 
analytic  than  in  imaginative  qualities,  loving  precision, 
grace,  and  finesse,  prone  to  attribute  an  almost  magical 
power  to  the  scientific  regulation  whether  of  politics  or 
religion,  had  brought  wit  and  fancy  and  the  elegant  arts 
of  society  to  as  great  perfection  as  was  possible  by  the 
a  priori  method.  Its  ideal  in  literature  was  to  conjure 
passion  within  the  magic  circle  of  courtliness,  or  to 
combine  the  appearance  of  careless  ease  and  gayety  of 
thought  with  intellectual  exactness  of  statement.  The 
eternal  watchfulness  of  a  wit  that  never  slept  had  made 
it  distrustful  of  the  natural  emotions  and  the  uncon 
ventional  expression  of  them,  and  its  first  question  about 
a  sentiment  was,  Will  it  be  safe  ?  about  a  phrase,  Will 
it  pass  with  the  Academy  ]  The  effect  of  its  example 
on  English  literature  would  appear  chiefly  in  neatness 
and  facility  of  turn,  in  point  and  epigrammatic  compact 
ness  of  phrase,  and  these  in  conveying  conventional 
sentiments  and  emotions,  in  appealing  to  good  society 
rather  than  to  human  nature.  Its  influence  would  be 
greatest  where  its  success  had  been  most  marked,  in 
what  was  called  moral  poetry,  whose  chosen  province 
•was  manners,  and  in  which  satire,  with  its  avenging 
scourge,  took  the  place  of  that  profounder  art  whose 
office  it  was  to  purify,  not  the  manners,  but  the  source 
of  them  in  the  soul,  by  pity  and  terror.  The  mistake 
of  the  whole  school  of  French  criticism,  it  seems  to  me, 
lay  in  its  tendency  to  confound  what  was  common  with 
what  was  vulgar,  in  a  too  exclusive  deference  to  authority 
at  the  expense  of  all  free  movement  of  the  mind. 

There  are  certain  defects  of  taste  which  correct  them 
selves  by  their  own  extravagance.  Language,  I  suspect, 
is  more  apt  to  be  reformed  by  the  charm  of  some  master 
of  it,  like  Milton,  than  by  any  amount  of  precept.  The 
influence  of  second-rate  writers  for  evil  is  at  best  ephem- 


402  POPE. 

eral,  for  true  style,  the  joint  result  of  culture  and  natu 
ral  aptitude,  is  always  in  fashion,  as  fine  manners  always 
are,  in  whatever  clothes.  Perhaps  some  reform  was 
needed  when  Quarles,  who  had  no  mean  gift  of  poesy, 
could  write, 

"  My  passion  lias  no  April  in  her  eyes: 
I  cannot  spend  in  mists;  I  cannot  mizzle; 
My  fluent  brains  are  too  severe  to  drizzle 
Slight  drops."  * 

Good  taste  is  an  excellent  thing  when  it  confines  itself 
to  its  own  rightful  province  of  the  proprieties,  but  when 
it  attempts  to  correct  those  profound  instincts  out  of 
whose  judgments  the  higher  principles  of  aesthetics  have 
been  formulated,  its  success  is  a  disaster.  During  the 
era  when  the  French  theory  of  poetry  was  supreme,  we 
notice  a  decline  from  imagination  to  fancy,  from  pas 
sion  to  wit,  from  metaphor,  which  fuses  image  and 
thought  in  one,  to  simile,  which  sets  one  beside  the 
other,  from  the  supreme  code  of  the  natural  sympathies 
to  the  parochial  by-laws  of  etiquette.  The  imagination 
instinctively  Platonizes,  and  it  is  the  essence  of  poetry 
that  it  should  be  unconventional,  that  the  soul  of  it 
should  subordinate  the  outward  parts  ;  while  the  arti 
ficial  method  proceeds  from  a  principle  the  reverse  of 
this,  making  the  spirit  lackey  the  form. 

Waller  preaches  up  this  new  doctrine  in  the  epilogue 
to  the  "  Maid's  Tragedy  "  :  - 

"  Nor  is  't  less  strange  such  mighty  wits  as  those 
Should  use  a  style  in  tragedy  like  prose; 
Well-sounding  verse,  where  princes  trend  the  stage, 
Should  speak  their  virtue  and  describe  their  rage." 

*  Elegie  on  Doctor  Wilson.    But  if  Quarles  had  been  led  astray  by 
the  vices  of  Donne's  manner,  he  had  good  company  in  Herbert  and 
Vaughan.     In  common  with  them,  too,  he  had  that  luck  of  simpleness 
which  is  even  more  delightful  than  wit.    In  the  same  poem  he  says,  — 
"  Go,  glorious  soul,  and  lay  thy  temples  down 
In  Abram's  bosom,  in  the  sacred  down 
Of  toft  eternity." 


POPE.  403 

That  it  should  be  beneath  the  dignity  of  princes  to 
speak  in  anything  but  rhyme  can  only  be  paralleled  by 
Mr.  Puff's  law  that  a  heroine  can  go  decorously  mad 
only  in  white  satin.  Waller,  I  suppose,  though  with  so 
loose  a  thinker  one  cannot  be  positive,  uses  "  describe" 
in  its  Latin  sense  of  limitation.  Fancy  Othello  or  Lear 
confined  to  this  go-cart !  Phillips  touches  the  true 
point  when  he  says,  "And  the  truth  is,  the  use  of 
measure  alone,  without  any  rime  at  all,  would  give  more 
scope  and  liberty  both  to  style  and  fancy  than  can  pos 
sibly  be  observed  in  rime.""*  But  let  us  test  Waller's 
method  by  an  example  or  two.  His  monarch  made 
reasonable,  thus  discourses  :  — 

"  Courage  our  greatest  failings  does  supply, 
And  makes  all  good,  or  handsomely  we  die. 
Life  is  a  thing  of  common  use;  by  heaven. 
As  well  to  insects  as  to  monarchs  given ; 
But  for  the  crown,  't  is  a  more  sacred  thing; 
I  '11  dying  lose  it,  or  I  '11  live  a  king. 
Come,  Diphilus,  we  must  together  walk 
And  of  a  matter  of  importance  talk."  [Exeunt. 

Blank  verse,  where  the  sentiment  is  trivial  as  here, 
merely  removes  prose  to  a  proper  ideal  distance,  where 
it  is  in  keeping  with  more  impassioned  parts,  but  com 
monplace  set  to  this  rocking-horse  jog  irritates  the 
nerves.  There  is  nothing  here  to  remind  us  of  the  older 
tragic  style  but  the  exeunt  at  the  close.  Its  pithy 
conciseness  and  the  relief  which  it  brings  us  from  his 
majesty's  prosing  give  it  an  almost  poetical  savor.  As- 
patia's  reflections  upon  suicide  (or  "  suppressing  our 
breath,"  as  she  calls  it),  in  the  same  play,  will  make  few 
readers  regret  that  Shakespeare  was  left  to  his  own  un 
assisted  barbarism  when  he  wrote  Hamlet's  soliloquy  on 
the  same  topic  :  — 

"  'T  was  in  compassion  of  our  woe 
That  nature  first  made  poisons  grow, 

*  Preface  to  the  Theatrum. 


404  POPE. 

For  hopeless  wretches  such  as  I 
Kindly  providing  means  to  die: 
As  mothers  do  their  children  keep, 
So  Nature  feeds  and  makes  us  sleep. 
The  indisposed  she  does  invite 
To  go  to  bed  before  't  is  night." 

Correctness  in  this  case  is  but  a  synonyme  of  monotony, 
and  words  are  chosen  for  the  number  of  their  syllables, 
for  their  rubbishy  value  to  fill-in,  instead  of  being  forced 
upon  the  poet  by  the  meaning  which  occupies  the  mind. 
Language  becomes  useful  for  its  diluting  properties, 
rather  than  as  the  medium  by  means  of  which  the 
thought  or  fancy  precipitate  themselves  in  crystals  upon 
a  connecting  thread  of  purpose.  Let  \is  read  a  few 
verses  from  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  that  we  may  feel 
fully  the  difference  between  the  rude  and  the  reformed 
styles.  This  also  shall  be  a  speech  of  Aspatia's.  An- 
tiphila,  one  of  her  maidens,  is  working  the  story  of 
Theseus  and  Ariadne  in  tapestry,  for  the  older  masters 
loved  a  picturesque  background  and  knew  the  value  of 
fanciful  accessaries.  Aspatia  thinks  the  face  of  Ariadne 
not  sad  enough  :  — 

"  Do  it  by  me, 

Do  it  again  by  me,  the  lost  Aspatia, 
And  you  shall  find  all  true  but  the  wild  island. 
Suppose  I  stand  upon  the  seabeach  now, 
Mine  arms  thus,  and  my  hair  blown  with  the  wind, 
Wild  as  that  desert;  and  let  all  about  me 
Be  teachers  of  my  story.    Do  my  face 
(If  ever  thou  hadst  feeling  of  a  sorrow) 
Thus,  thus,  Antiphila;  strive  to  make  me  look 
Like  sorrow's  monument;  and  the  trees  about  me 
Let  them  be  dry  and  leafless ;  let  the  rocks 
Groan  with  continual  surges;  and  behind  me 
Hake  all  a  desolation." 

What  instinctive  felicity  of  versification  !  what  sobbing 
breaks  and  passionate  repetitions  are  here  ! 

We  see  what  the  direction  of  the  new  tendency  was, 
but  it  would  be  an  inadequate  or  a  dishonest  criticism 


POPE.  405 

that  should  hold  Pope  responsible  for  the  narrow  com 
pass  of  the  instrument  which  was  his  legacy  from  his 
immediate  predecessors,  any  more  than  for  the  weari 
some  thrumming-over  of  his  tune  by  those  who  came 
after  him  and  who  had  caught  his  technical  skill  without 
his  genius.  The  question  properly  stated  is,  How  much 
was  it  possible  to  make  of  the  material  supplied  by  the 
age  in  which  he  lived  1  and  how  much  did  he  make  of 
it  1  Thus  far,  among  the  great  English  poets  who  pre 
ceded  him,  we  have  seen  actual  life  represented  by 
Chaucer,  imaginative  life  by  Spenser,  ideal  life  by  Shake 
speare,  the  interior  life  by  Milton.  But  as  everything 
aspires  to  a  rhythmical  utterance  of  itself,  so  conven 
tional  life,  itself  a  new  phenomenon,  was  waiting  for  its 
poet.  It  found  or  made  a  most  fitting  one  in  Pope.  He 
stands  for  exactness  of  intellectual  expression,  for  per 
fect  propriety  of  phrase  (I  speak  of  him  at  his  best),  and 
is  a  striking  instance  how  much  success  and  permanence 
of  reputation  depend  on  conscientious  finish  as  well  as 
on  native  endowment.  Butler  asks,  — 

"  Then  why  should  those  who  pick  and  choose 
The  best  of  all  the  best  compose, 
And  join  it  by  Mosaic  art, 
In  graceful  order,  part  to  part, 
To  make  the  whole  in  beauty  suit, 
Not  merit  as  complete  repute 
As  those  who,  with  less  art  and  pain, 
Can  do  it  with  their  native  brain?  " 

Butler  knew  very  well  that  precisely  what  stamps  a  man 
as  an  artist  is  this  power  of  finding  out  what  is  "  the 
best  of  all  the  best." 

I  confess  that  I  come  to  the  treatment  of  Pope  with 
diffidence.  I  was  brought  up  in  the  old  superstition 
that  he  was  the  greatest  poet  that  ever  lived ;  and  when 
I  came  to  find  that  I  had  instincts  of  my  own,  and  my 
mind  was  brought  in  contact  with  the  apostles  of  a  more 


406  POPE. 

esoteric  doctrine  of  poetry,  I  felt  that  ardent  desire  for 
smashing  the  idols  I  had  been  brought  up  to  worship, 
without  any  regard  to  their  artistic  beauty,  which  char 
acterizes  youthful  zeal.  What  was  it  to  me  that  Pope 
was  called  a  master  of  style  1  I  felt,  as  Addison  says 
in  his  Freeholder  when  answering  an  argument  in  favor 
of  the  Pretender  because  he  could  speak  English  and 
George  I.  could  not,  "  that  I  did  not  wish  to  be  tyran 
nized  over  in  the  best  English  that  ever  was  spoken." 
The  young  demand  thoughts  that  find  an  echo  in  their 
real  and  not  their  acquired  nature,  and  care  very  little 
about  the  dress  they  are  put  in.  It  is  later  that  we 
learn  to  like  the  conventional,  as  we  do  olives.  There 
was  a  time  when  I  could  not  read  Pope,  but  disliked  him 
on  principle  as  old  Roger  Ascham  seems  to  have  felt 
about  Italy  when  he  says,  "  I  was  once  in  Italy  myself, 
but  I  thank  God  my  abode  there  was  only  nine  days." 

But  Pope  fills  a  very  important  place  in  the  history  of 
English  poetry,  and  must  be  studied  by  every  one  Avho 
would  come  to  a  clear  knowledge  of  it.  I  have  since 
read  over  every  line  that  Pope  ever  wrote,  and  every 
letter  written  by  or  to  him,  and  that  more  than  once. 
If  I  have  not  come  to  the  conclusion  that  he  is  the 
greatest  of  poets,  I  believe  that  I  am  at  least  in  a  con 
dition  to  allow  him  every  merit  that  is  fairly  his.  I 
have  said  that  Pope  as  a  literary  man  represents  pre 
cision  and  grace  of  expression  ;  but  as  a  poet  he  repre 
sents  something  more,  —  nothing  less,  namely,  than  one 
of  those  eternal  controversies  of  taste  which  will  last 
as  long  as  the  imagination  and  understanding  divide 
men  between  them.  It  is  not  a  matter  to  be  settled 
by  any  amount  of  argument  or  demonstration.  There 
are  born  Popists  or  Wordsworthians,  Lockists  or  Kant- 
ists,  and  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  said  of  the  matter. 

Wordsworth  was  not  in  a  condition  to  do  Pope  justice. 


POPE.  407 

A  man  brought  up  in  sublime  mountain  solitudes,  and 
whose  nature  was  a  solitude  more  vast  than  they,  walk 
ing  an  earth  which  quivered  with  the  throe  of  the 
French  Revolution,  the  child  of  an  era  of  profound 
mental  and  moral  movement,  it  could  not  be  expected 
that  he  should  be  in  sympathy  with  the  poet  of  artificial 
life.  Moreover,  he  was  the  apostle  of  imagination,  and 
came  at  a  time  when  the  school  which  Pope  founded 
had  degenei-ated  into  a  mob  of  mannerists  who  wrote 
with  ease,  and  who  with  their  congenial  critics  united  at 
once  to  decry  poetiy  which  brought  in  the  dangerous 
innovation  of  having  a  soul  in  it. 

But  however  it  may  be  with  poets,  it  is  very  certain 
that  a  reader  is  happiest  whose  mind  is  broad  enough 
to  enjoy  the  natural  school  for  its  nature,  and  the  artifi- 
cial  for  its  artificiality,  provided  they  be  only  good  of 
their  kind.  At  any  rate,  we  must  allow  that  the  man 
who  can  produce  one  perfect  work  is  either  a  great  gen 
ius  or  a  very  lucky  one ;  and  so  far  as  we  who  read  are 
concerned,  it  is  of  secondary  importance  which.  And 
Pope  has  done  this  in  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock."  For 
wit,  fancy,  invention,  and  keeping,  it  has  never  been 
surpassed.  I  do  not  say  there  is  in.  it  poetry  of  the  high 
est  order,  or  that  Pope  is  a  poet  whom  any  one  would 
choose  as  the  companion  of  his  best  hours.  There  is  no 
inspiration  in  it,  no  trumpet-call,  but  for  pure  entertain 
ment  it  is  unmatched.  There  are  two  kinds  of  genius. 
The  first  and  highest  may  be  said  to  speak  out  of  the 
eternal  to  the  present,  and  must  compel  its  age  to  un 
derstand  it ;  the  second  xinderstands  its  age,  and  tells  it 
what  it  wishes  to  be  told.  Let  us  find  strength  and  in 
spiration  in  the  one,  amusement  and  instruction  in  the 
other,  and  be  honestly  thankful  for  both. 

The  very  earliest  of  Pope's  productions  give  indications 
of  that  sense  and  discretion,  as  well  as  wit,  which  after- 


408  POPE. 

ward  so  eminently  distinguished  him.  The  facility  of 
expression  is  remarkable,  and  we  find  also  that  perfect 
balance  of  metre,  which  he  afterward  carried  so  far  as  to 
be  wearisome.  His  pastorals  were  written  in  his  six 
teenth  year,  and  their  publication  immediately  brought 
him  into  notice.  The  following  four  verses  from  his 
first  pastoral  are  quite  characteristic  in  their  antithetic 
balance  :  — 

"  You  that,  too  wise  for  pride,  too  good  for  power, 
Knjoy  the  glory  to  be  great  no  more,- 
And  carrying  with  you  all  the  world  can  boast, 
To  all  the  world  illustriously  are  lost!  " 

The  sentiment  is  affected,  and  reminds  one  of  that  future 
period  of  Pope's  Correspondence  with  his  Friends,  when 
Swift,  his  heart  corroding  with  disappointed  ambition  at 
Dublin,  Bolingbroke  raising  delusive  turnips  at  his  farm, 
and  Pope  pretending  not  to  feel  the  lampoons  which 
imbittered  his  life,  played  together  the  solemn  farce  of 
affecting  indifference  to  the  world  by  which  it  would 
have  agonized  them  to  be  forgotten,  and  wrote  letters 
addressed  to  each  other,  but  really  intended  for  that 
posterity  whose  opinion  they  assumed  to  despise. 

In  these  pastorals  there  is  an  entire  want  of  nature. 
Tor  example  in  that  on  the  death  of  Mrs.  Tempest :  — 

"  Her  fate  is  whispered  by  the  gentle  breeze 
And  told  in  sighs  to  all  the  trembling  trees; 
The  trembling  trees,  in  every  plain  and  wood, 
Her  fate  remurmur  to  the  silver  flood; 
The  silver  flood,  so  lately  calm,  appears 
Swelled  with  new  passion,  and  o'erflows  with  tears ; 
The  winds  and  trees  and  floods  her  death  deplore 
Daphne,  our  grief!  onr  glory  now  no  more!  " 

All  this  is  as  perfectly  professional  as  the  mourning 
of  an  undertaker.  Still  worse,  Pope  materializes  and 
makes  too  palpably  objective  that  sympathy  which  our 
grief  forces  upon  outward  nature.  Milton,  before  mak 
ing  the  echoes  mourn  for  Lycidas,  puts  our  feelings  in 


POPE.  409 

tune,  as  it  were,  and  hints  at  his  own  imagination  as  the 
source  of  this  emotion  in  inanimate  things,  — 

"  But,  0  the  heavy  change  now  thou  art  gone ! " 
In  "  Windsor  Forest "  we  find  the  same  thing  again  :  — — 

"  Here  his  first  lays  majestic  Denham  sung, 
There  the  last  numbers  flowed  from  Cowley's  tongue; 
0  early  lost,  what  tears  the  river  shed 
When  the  sad  pomp  along  his  banks  was  led ! 
His  drooping  swans  on  every  note  expire, 
And  on  his  willows  hung  each  muse's  lyre!  " 

In  the  same  poem  he  indulges  the  absurd  conceit 
that, 

"  Beasts  urged  by  us,  their  fellow-beasts  pursue, 
And  learn  of  man  each  other  to  undo" ; 

and  in  the  succeeding  verses  gives  some  striking  in 
stances  of  that  artificial  diction,  so  inappropriate  to 
poems  descriptive  of  natural  objects  and  ordinary  life, 
which  brought  verse-making  to  such  a  depth  of  absurd 
ity  in  the  course  of  the  century. 

"  With  slaughtering  guns,  the  unwearied  fowler  roves 
Where  frosts  have  whitened  all  the  naked  groves; 
Where  doves  in  flocks  the  leafless  trees  o'ershade, 
And  lonely  wookcocks  haunt  the  watery  glade; 
He  lifts  the  tube  and  levels  with  his  eye, 
Straight  a  short  thunder  breaks  the  frozen  sky: 
Oft  as  in  airy  rings  they  skim  the  heath, 
The  clamorous  lapwings  feel  the  leaden  death; 
Oft  as  the  mounting  larks  their  notes  prepare, 
They  fall  and  leave  their  little  lives  in  air." 

Now  one  would  imagine  that  the  tube  of  the  fowler  was 
a  telescope  instead  of  a  gun.  And  think  of  the  larks 
preparing  their  notes  like  a  country  choir!  Yet  even 
here  there  are  admirable  lines,  — 

"  Oft  as  in  airy  rings  they  skim  the  heath," 
"  They  fall  and  leave  their  little  lives  in  air," 

for  example. 

In  Pope's  next  poem,  the  "  Essay  on  Criticism,"  the 
18 


410  POPE. 

wit  and  poet  become  apparent.  It  is  full  of  clear 
thoughts,  compactly  expressed.  In  this  poem,  written 
when  Pope  was  only  twenty-one,  occur  some  of  those 
lines  which  have  become  proverbial ;  such  as 

"  A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing  " ; 

"  For  fools  rush  in  where  angels  fear  to  tread  " ; 

"  True  wit  is  Nature  to  advantage  dressed, 
What  oft  was  thought,  but  ne'er  so  well  expressed." 

"  For  each  ill  author  is  as  bad  a  friend." 

In  all  of  these  we  notice  that  terseness  in  which  (re 
gard  being  had  to  his  especial  range  of  thought)  Pope 
has  never  been  equalled.  One  cannot  help  being  struck 
also  with  the  singular  discretion  which  the  poem  gives 
evidence  of.  I  do  not  know  where  to  look  for  another  au 
thor  in  whom  it  appeared  so  early,  and,  considering  the 
vivacity  of  his  mind  and  the  constantly  besetting  temp 
tation  of  his  wit,  it  is  still  more  wonderful.  In  his 
boyish  correspondence  with  poor  old  Wycherley,  one 
would  suppose  him  to  be  the  man  and  Wycherley  the 
youth.  Pope's  understanding  was  no  less  vigorous 
(when  not  the  dupe  of  his  nerves)  than  his  fancy  was 
lightsome  and  sprightly. 

I  come  now  to  what  in  itself  would  be  enough  to  have 
immortalized  him  as  a  poet,  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock," 
in  which,  indeed,  he  appears  more  purely  as  poet  than 
in  any  other  of  his  productions.  Elsewhere  he  has 
shown  more  force,  more  wit,  more  reach  of  thought,  but 
nowhere  such  a  truly  artistic  combination  of  elegance 
and  fancy.  His  genius  has  here  found  its  true  direction, 
and  the  very  same  artificiality,  which  in  his  pastorals 
was  unpleasing,  heightens  the  effect,  and  adds  to  the 
general  keeping.  As  truly  as  Shakespeare  is  the  poet 
of  man,  as  God  made  him,  dealing  with  great  passions 
and  innate  motives,  so  truly  is  Pope  the  poet  of  society, 


POPE.  ,          411 

the  delineator  of  manners,  the  exposer  of  those  motives 
which  may  be  called  acquired,  whose  spring  is  in  insti 
tutions  and  habits  of  purely  worldly  origin. 

The  "Rape  of  the  Lock"  was  written  in  Pope's  twenty- 
fourth  year,  and  the  machinery  of  the  Sylphs  was 
added  at  the  suggestion  of  Dr.  Garth,  —  a  circumstance 
for  which  we  can  feel  a  more  unmixed  gratitude  to  him 
than  for  writing  the  "Dispensary."  The  idea  was  taken 
from  that  entertaining  book  "  The  Count  de  Gabalis,"  in 
which  Fouque  afterward  found  the  hint  for  his  "Un 
dine  "  ;  but  the  little  sprites  as  they  appear  in  the  poem 
are  purely  the  creation  of  Pope's  fancy. 

The  theory  of  the  poem  is  excellent.  The  heroic  is 
out  of  the  question  in  fine  society.  It  is  perfectly  true 
that  almost  every  door  we  pass  in  the  street  closes  upon 
its  private  tragedy,  but  the  moment  a  great  passion 
enters  a  man  he  passes  at  once  out  of  the  artificial  into 
the  human.  So  long  as  he  continues  artificial,  the  sub 
lime  is  a  conscious  absurdity  to  him.  The  mock-heroic 
then  is  the  only  way  in  which  the  petty  actions  and 
sufferings  of  the  fine  world  can  be  epically  treated,  and 
the  contrast  continually  suggested  with  subjects  of  larger 
scope  and  more  dignified  treatment,  makes  no  small 
part  of  the  pleasure  and  sharpens  the  point  of  the  wit. 
The  invocation  is  admirable  :  — 

"  Say,  "what  strange  motive,  Goddess,  could  compel, 
A  well-bred  lord  to  assault  a  gentle  belle  ? 
O  say  what  stranger  cause,  yet  unexplored, 
Could  make  a  gentle  belle  reject  a  lord?  " 

The  keynote  of  the  poem  is  here  struck,  and  we  are  able 
to  put  ourselves  in  tune  with  it.  It  is  not  a  parody  of 
the  heroic  style,  but  only  a  setting  it  in  satirical  juxta 
position  with  cares  and  events  and  modes  of  thought 
with  which  it  is  in  comical  antipathy,  and  while  it  is 
ngt  degraded,  they  are  shown  in  their  triviality.  The 


412  POPE. 

"clouded  cane,"  as  compared  with  the  Homeric  spear, 
indicates  the  difference  of  scale,  the  lower  plane  of 
emotions  and  passions.  The  opening  of  the  action,  too, 
ia  equally  good  :  — 

"  Sol  through  white  curtains  shot  a  timorous  ray, 
And  oped  those  eyes  that  must  eclipse  the  day, 
Now  lapdogs  give  themselves  the  rousing  shake, 
And  sleepless  lovers  just  at  twelve  awake; 
Thrice  rung  the  bell,  the  slipper  knocked  the  ground, 
And  the  pressed  watch  returned  a  silver  sound." 

The  mythology  of  the  Sylphs  is  full  of  the  most  fanciful 
wit;  indeed,  wit  infused  with  fancy  is  Pope's  peculiar 
merit.  The  Sylph  is  addressing  Belinda  :  — 

"  Know,  then,  unnumbered  spirits  round  tb.ee  fly, 
The  light  militia  of  the  lower  sky; 
These,  though  unseen,  are  ever  on  the  wing, 
Hang  o'er  the  box  and  hover  round  the  ring. 
As  now  your  own  our  beings  were  of  old, 
And  once  enclosed  in  woman's  beauteous  mould ; 
Think  not,  when  woman's  transient  breath  is  fled, 
That  all  her  vanities  at  once  are  dead; 
Succeeding  vanities  she  still  regards, 
And,  though  she  plays  no  more,  o'erlooks  the  cards. 
For  when  the  fair  in  all  their  pride  expire, 
To  their  first  elements  their  souls  retire ; 
The  sprites  of  fiery  termagants  in  flame 
Mount  up  and  take  a  salamander's  name; 
Soft  yielding  nymphs  to  water  glide  away 
And  sip,  with  nymphs,  their  elemental  tea; 
The  graver  prude  sinks  downward  to  a  gnome, 
In  search  of  mischief  still  on  earth  to  roam; 
The  light  coquettes  in  sylphs  aloft  repair 
And  sport  and  flutter  in  the  fields  of  air." 

And  the  contrivance  by  which  Belinda  is  awakened  is 
also  perfectly  in  keeping  with  all  the  rest  of  the  machin 
ery  : — 

"  He  said :  when  Shock,  who  thought  she  slept  too  long, 
Leaped  up  and  waked  his  mistress  with  his  tongue; 
'T  was  then,  Belinda,  if  report  say  true, 
Thy  eyes  first  opened  on  a  billet-doux." 


POPE.  413 

Throughout  this  poem  the  satiric  wit  of  Pope  peeps  out 
in  the  pleasantest  little  smiling  ways,  as  where,  in  de 
scribing  the  toilet-table,  he  says  :  — 

"Here  files  of  pins  extend  their  shining  rows, 
Puffs,  powders,  patches,  Bibles,  billet-doux." 

Or  when,  after  the  fatal  lock  has  been  severed, 

"  Then  flashed  the  living  lightning  from  her  eyes, 
And  screams  of  horror  rend  the  affrighted  skies, 
Not  louder  shrieks  to  pitying  Heaven  are  cast 
When  husbands  or  when  lapdogs  breathe  their  last ; 
Or  when  rich  china-vessels,  fallen  from  high, 
In  glittering  dust  and  painted  fragments  lie !  " 

And  so,  when  the  conflict  begins  :  — 

"  Now  Jove  suspends  his  golden  scales  in  air; 
Weighs  the  men's  wits  against  the  ladies'  hair; 
The  doubtful  beam  long  nods  from  side  to  side ; 
At  length  the  wits  mount  up,  the  hairs  subside." 

But  more  than  the  wit  and  fancy,  I  think,  the  perfect 
keeping  of  the  poem  deserves  admiration.  Except  a 
touch  of  grossness,  here  and  there,  there  is  the  most 
pleasing  harmony  in  all  the  conceptions  and  images. 
The  punishments  which  he  assigns  to  the  sylphs  who 
neglect  their  duty  are  charmingly  appropriate  and  in 
genious  :  — - 

"  Whatever  spirit,  careless  of  his  charge, 
His  post  neglects,  or  leaves  the  fair  at  large, 
Shall  feel  sharp  vengeance  soon  o'ertake  his  sins ; 
Be  stopped  in  vials  or  transfixed  with  pins, 
Or  plunged  in  lakes  of  bitter  washes  lie, 
Or  wedged  whole  ages  in  a  bodkin's  eye; 
Gums  and  pomatums  shall  his  flight  restrain, 
While  clogged  he  beats  his  silver  wings  in  vain ; 
Or  alum  styptics  with  contracting  power, 
Shrink  his  thin  essence  like  arivelled  flower; 
Or  as  Ixion  fixed  the  wretch  shall  feel 
The  giddy  motion  of  the  whirling  wheel, 
In  fumes  of  burning  chocolate  shall  glow, 
And  tremble  at  the  sea  that  froths  below !  " 


414  POPE. 

The  speech  of  Thalestris,  too,  with  its  droll  climax, 
is  equally  good  :  — 

"  Methinks  already  I  your  tears  survey, 
Already  hear  the  horrid  things  they  say, 
Already  see  you  a  degraded  toast, 
And  all  your  honor  in  a  whisper  lost! 
How  shall  I  then  your  helpless  fame  defend  ? 
'T  will  then  be  infamy  to  seem  your  friend! 
And  shall  this  prize,  the  inestimable  prize, 
Exposed  through  crystal  to  the  gazing  eyes, 
And  heightened  by  the  diamond's  circling  rays, 
On  that  rapacious  hand  forever  blaze? 
Sooner  shall  grass  in  Hydepark  Circus  grow, 
And  wits  take  lodging  in  the  sound  of  Bow, 
Sooner  let  earth,  air,  sea,  in  chaos  fall, 
Men,  monkeys,  lapdogs,  parrots,  perish  all !  " 

So  also  Belinda's  account  of  the  morning  omens  :  — 

"  'T  was  this  the  morning  omens  seemed  to  tell; 
Thrice  from  my  trembling  hand  the  patch-box  fell; 
The  tottering  china  shook  without  a  wind; 
Nay,  Poll  sat  mute,  and  Shock  was  most  unkind." 

The  idea  of  the  goddess  of  Spleen,  and  of  her  palace, 
where 

"  The  dreaded  East  is  all  the  wind  that  blows," 

was  a  very  happy  one.  In  short,  the  whole  poem  more 
truly  deserves  the  name  of  a  creation  than  anything 
Pope  ever  wrote.  The  action  is  confined  to  a  world  of 
his  own,  the  supernatural  agency  is  wholly  of  his  own 
contrivance,  and  nothing  is  allowed  to  overstep  the 
limitations  of  the  siibject.  It  ranks  by  itself  as  one  of 
the  purest  works  of  human  fancy ;  whether  that  fancy 
be  strictly  poetical  or  not  is  another  matter.  If  we 
compare  it  with  the  "  Midsummer-night's  Dream,"  an. 
uncomfortable  doubt  is  suggested.  The  perfection  of 
form  in  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock "  is  to  me  conclusive 
evidence  that  in  it  the  natural  genius  of  Pope  found 
fuller  and  freer  expression  than  in  any  other  of  his 
poems.  The  others  are  aggregates  of  brilliant  passages 
rather  than  harmonious  wholes. 


POPE.  415 

It  is  a  droll  illustration  of  the  inconsistencies  of 
human  nature,  a  more  profound  satire  than  Pope  him 
self  ever  wrote,  that  his  fame  should  chiefly  rest  upon 
the  "  Essay  on  Man."  It  has  been  praised  and  admired 
by  men  of  the  most  opposite  beliefs,  and  men  of  no 
.  belief  at  all.  Bishops  and  free-thinkers  have  met  hero 
on  a  common  ground  of  sympathetic  approval.  And, 
indeed,  there  is  no  particular  faith  in  it.  It  is  a  droll 
medley  of  inconsistent  opinions.  It  proves  only  two 
things  beyond  a  question,  —  that  Pope  was  not  a  great 
thinker ;  and  that  wherever  he  found  a  thought,  no 
matter  what,  he  could  express  it  so  tersely,  so  clearly, 
and  with  such  smoothness  of  versification  as  to  give  it 
an  everlasting  currency.  Hobbes's  unwieldy  Leviathan, 
left  stranded  there  on  the  shore  of  the  last  age,  and 
nauseous  with  the  stench  of  its  selfishness,  —  from  this 
Pope  distilled  a  fragrant  oil  with  which  to  fill  the 
brilliant  lamps  of  his  philosophy,  —  lamps  like  those  in 
the  tombs  of  alchemists,  that  go  out  the  moment  the 
healthy  air  is  let  in  upon  them.  The  only  positive 
doctrines  in  the  poem  are  the  selfishness  of  Hobbes  set 
to  music,  and  the  Pantheism  of  Spinoza  brought  down 
from  mysticism  to  commonplace.  Nothing  can  be  more 
absurd  than  many  of  the  dogmas  taught  in  this  "  Essay 
on  Man."  For  example,  Pope  affirms  explicitly  that 
instinct  is  something  better  than  reason  :  — 

"  See  him  from  Nature  rising  slow  to  art, 
To  copy  instinct  then  was  reason's  part; 
Thus,  then,  to  man  the  voice  of  nature  spake ;  — 
Go,  from  the  creatures  thy  instructions  take ; 
Learn  from  the  beasts  what  food  the  thickets  yield; 
Learn  from  the  birds  the  physic  of  the  field; 
The  arts  of  building  from  the  bee  receive; 
Learn  of  the  mole  to  plough,  the  worm  to  weave; 
Learn  of  the  little  nautilus  to  sail, 
Spread  the  thin  oar,  or  catch  the  driving  gale." 

I  say  nothing  of  the  quiet  way  in  which  the  general 


416  POPE. 

term  "  nature  "  is  substituted  for  God,  but  how  unut 
terably  void  of  reasonableness  is  the  theory  that  Nature 
would  have  left  her  highest  product,  man,  destitute  of 
that  instinct  with  which  she  had  endowed  her  other 
creatures  !  As  if  reason  were  not  the  most  sublimated 
form  of  instinct.  The  accuracy  on  which  Pope  prided* 
himself,  and  for  which  he  is  commended,  was  not  ac 
curacy  of  thought  so  much  as  of  expression.  And  he 
cannot  always  even  claim  this  merit,  but  only  that  of 
correct  rhyme,  as  in  one  of  the  passages  I  have  already 
quoted  from  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock  "  he  talks  of  cast 
ing  shrieks  to  heaven,  —  a  performance  of  some  diffi 
culty,  except  when  cast  is  needed  to  rhyme  with  last. 

But  the  supposition  is  that  in  the  "  Essay  on  Man  " 
Pope  did  not  himself  know  what  he  was  writing.  He 
was  only  the  condenser  and  epigrammatizer  of  Boling- 
broke,  —  a  very  fitting  St.  John  for  such  a  gospel.  Or, 
if  he  did  know,  we  can  account  for  the  contradictions  by 
supposing  that  he  threw  in  some  of  the  commonplace 
moralities  to  conceal  his  real  drift.  Johnson  asserts 
that  Bolingbroke  in  private  laughed  at  Pope's  having 
been  made  the  mouthpiece  of  opinions  which  he  did  not 
hold.  But  this  is  hardly  probable  when  we  consider  the 
relations  between  them.  It  is  giving  Pope  altogether 
too  little  credit  for  intelligence  to  suppose  that  he  did 
not  understand  the  principles  of  his  intimate  friend. 
The  caution  with  which  he  at  first  concealed  the  author 
ship  would  argue  that  he  had  doubts  as  to  the  reception 
of  the  poem.  When  it  was  attacked  on  the  score  of  in 
fidelity,  he  gladly  accepted  Warburton's  championship, 
and  assumed  whatever  pious  interpretation  he  contrived 
to  thrust  upon  it.  The  beginning  of  the  poem  is  famil 
iar  to  everybody  :  — 

"  Awake,  my  St  John,  leave  nil  meaner  things 
To  low  ambition  and  the  pride  of  kings; 


POPE.  417 

Let  us  (since  life  can  little  more  supply 
Than  just  to  look  about  us  and  to  die) 
Expatiate  free  o'er  all  this  scene  of  man, 
A  mighty  maze,  — but  not  without  a  plan  "; 

To  expatiate  o'er  a  mighty  maze  is  rather  loose  writing ; 
but  the  last  verse,  as  it  stood  in  the  original  editions, 
was, 

"  A  mighty  maze  of  walks  without  a  plan  " ; 

and  perhaps  this  came  nearer  Pope's  real  opinion  than 
the  verse  he  substituted  for  it.  Warburton  is  careful 
not  to  mention  this  variation  in  his  notes.  The  poem  is 
everywhere  as  remarkable  for  its  confusion  of  logic  as  it 
often  is  for  ease  of  verse  and  grace  of  expression.  An 
instance  of  both  occurs  in  a  passage  frequently  quoted  :  — 

"  Heaven  from  all  creatures  hides  the  book  of  fate; 
All  but  the  page  prescribed,  their  present  state ; 
From  brutes  what  men,  from  men  what  spirits  know, 
Or  who  would  suffer  being  here  below  ? 
The  lamb  thy  riot  dooms  to  bleed  to-day, 
Had  he  thy  reason,  would  he  skip  and  play? 
Pleased  to  the  last,  he  crops  the  flowery  food, 
And  licks  the  hand  just  raised  to  shed  his  blood. 
0,  blindness  to  the  future  kindly  given 
That  each  may  fill  the  circle  meant  by  heaven! 
Who  sees  with  equal  eye,  as  God  of  all, 
A  hero  perish  or  a  sparrow  fall, 
Atoms  or  systems  into  ruin  hurled, 
And  now  a  bubble  burst,  and  now  a  world !  " 

Now,  if  "heaven  from  all  creatures  hides  the  book  of 
fate,"  why  should  not  the  lamb  "  skip  and  play,"  if  he 
had  the  reason  of  man  3  Why,  because  he  would  then 
be  able  to  read  the  book  of  fate.  But  if  man  himself 
cannot,  why,  then,  could  the  lamb  with  the  reason  of 
man]  For,  if  the  lamb  had  the  reason  of  man,  the 
book  of  fate  would  still  be  hidden,  so  far  as  himself  was 
concerned.  If  the  inferences  we  can  draw  from  appear 
ances  are  equivalent  to  a  knowledge  of  destiny,  the 
knowing  enough  to  take  an  umbrella  in  cloudy  weather 

18*  AA 


418  POPE. 

might  be  called  so.  There  is  a  manifest  confusion  be 
tween  what  we  know  about  ourselves  and  about  other 
people  ;  the  whole  point  of  the  passage  being  that  we 
are  always  mercifully  blinded  to  our  own  future,  how 
ever  much  reason  we  may  possess.  There  is  also  inac 
curacy  as  well  as  inelegance  in  saying, 

"  Heaven, 

Who  sees  with  equal  eye,  as  God  of  all, 
A  hero  perish  or  a  sparrow  fall." 

To  the  last  verse  Warburton,  desirous  of  reconciling  his 
author  with  Scripture,  appends  a  note  referring  to  Mat 
thew  x.  29  :  "Are  not  two  sparrows  sold  for  one  farthing1? 
and  one  of  them  shall  not  fall  to  the  ground  without 
your  Father."  It  would  not  have  been  safe  to  have 
referred  to  the  thirty-first  verse  :  "Fear  ye  not,  there 
fore,  ye  are  of  more  value  than  many  sparrows." 

To  my  feeling,   one  of  the  most  beautiful  passages 
in  the  whole  poem  is  that  familiar  one  :  — 

*  "  Lo,  the  poor  Indiun  whose  untutored  mind 
Sees  God  in  clouds,  or  hears  him  in  the  wind, 
His  soul  proud  science  never  taught  to  stray 
Far  as  the  solar  walk  or  milky  way: 
Yet  simple  Nature  to  his  hope  has  given 
Behind  the  cloud-topt  hill  a  humbler  heaven; 
Some  safer  world  in  depth  of  woods  embraced, 
Some  happier  island  in  the  watery  waste, 
Where  slaves  once  more  their  native  land  behold, 
No  fiends  torment,  no  Christians  thirst  for  gold. 
To  be  contents  his  natural  desire, 
He  asks  no  angel's  wing,  no  seraph's  fire, 
But  thinks,  admitted  to  that  Squal  sky, 
His  faithful  dog  shall  bear  him  company." 

But  this  comes  in  as  a  corollary  to  what  went  just 
before :  — 

"  Hope  springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast, 
Man  never  is  but  always  to  be  blest; 
The  soul,  uneasy,  and  confined  from  home, 
Rests  and  expatiates  in  a  life  to  come." 


POPE.  419 

Then  follows  immediately  the  passage  about  the  poor 
Indian,  who,  after  all,  it  seems,  is  contented  with  merely 
being,  and  whose  soul,  therefore,  is  an  exception  to  the 
general  rule.  And  what  have  the  "solar  walk"  (as  he 
calls  it)  and  "milky  way"  to  do  with  the  affair]  Does 
our  hope  of  heaven  depend  on  our  knowledge  of  astron 
omy1?  Or  does  he  mean  that  science  and  faith  are  neces 
sarily  hostile  1  And,  after  being  told  that  it  is  the  "  un 
tutored  mind"  of  the  savage  which  "sees  God  in  clouds 
and  hears  him  in  the  wind,"  we  are  rather  surprised 
to  find  that  the  lesson  the  poet  intends  to  teach  is  that 

"  All  are  but  parts  of  one  stupendous  whole, 
Whose  body  Nature  is,  and  God  the  soul. 
That,  changed  through  all,  and  yet  in  all  the  same, 
Great  in  the  earth,  as  in  the  ethereal  frame, 
Warms  in  the  sun,  refreshes  in  the  breeze, 
Glows  in  the  stars,  and  blossoms  in  the  trees." 

So  that  we  are  no  better  off  than  the  untutored  Indian, 
after  the  poet  has  tutored  us.  Dr.  Warburton  makes  a 
rather  lame  attempt  to  ward  off  the  charge  of  Spinozism 
from  this  last  passage.  He  would  have  found  it  harder 
to  show  that  the  acknowledgment  of  any  divine  revela 
tion  would  not  overturn  the  greater  part  of  its  teach 
ings.  If  Pope  intended  by  his  poem  all  that  the  bishop 
takes  for  granted  in  his  commentary,  we  must  deny  him 
what  is  usually  claimed  as  his  first  merit, —  clearness. 
If  he  did  not,  we  grant  him  clearness  as  a  writer  at  the 
expense  of  sincerity  as  a  man.  Perhaps  a  more  charita 
ble  solution  of  the  difficulty  would  be,  that  Pope's  pre 
cision  of  thought  was  no  match  for  the  fluency  of  his 
verse. 

Lord  Byron  goes  so  far  as  to  say,  in  speaking  of  Pope, 
that  he  who  executes  the  best,  no  matter  what  his 
department,  will  rank  the  highest.  I  think  there  are 
enough  indications  in  these  letters  of  Byron's,  however, 
that  they  were  written  rather  more  against  Wordsworth 


420  POPE. 

than  for  Pope.  The  rule  he  lays  down  would  make  Vol 
taire  a  greater  poet,  in  some  respects,  than  Shakespeare. 
Byron  cites  Petrarch  as  an  example  ;  yet  if  Petrarch  had 
put  nothing  more  into  his  sonnets  than  execution,  there 
are  plenty  of  Italian  sonneteers  who  would  be  his  match. 
But,  in  point  of  fact,  the  department  chooses  the  man  and 
not  the  man  the  department,  and  it  has  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  our  estimate  of  him.  Is  the  department  of  Mil 
ton  no  higher  than  that  of  Butler  1  Byron  took  especial 
care  not  to  write  in  the  style  he  commended.  But  I 
think  Pope  has  received  quite  as  much  credit  in  respect 
even  of  execution  as  he  deserves.  Surely  execution  is 
not  confined  to  versification  alone.  What  can  be  worse 
than  this  1 

"  At  length  Erasmus,  that  great,  injured  name, 
(The  glory  of  the  priesthood  and  the  shame,) 
Stemmed  the  wild  torrent  of  a  barbarous  age, 
And  drove  those  holy  vandals  off  the  stage." 

It  would  have  been  hard  for  Pope  to  have  found  a  pret 
tier  piece  of  confusion  in  any  of  the  small  authors  he 
laughed  at  than  this  image  of  a  great,  injured  name 
stemming  a  torrent  and  driving  vandals  otf  the  stage. 
And  in  the  following  verses  the  image  is  helplessly  con 
fused  :  — 

"Kind  self-conceit  to  some  her  glass  applies, 
Which  no  one  looks  in  with  another's  eyes, 
But,  as  the  flatterer  or  dependant  paint, 
Beholds  himself  a  patriot,  chief,  or  saint." 

The  use  of  the  word  "  applies  "  is  perfectly  un-English  ; 
and  it  seems  that  people  who  look  in  this  remarkable 
glass  see  their  pictures  and  not  their  reflections.  Often, 
also,  when  Pope  attempts  the  sublime,  his  epithets  be 
come  curiously  unpoetical,  as  where  he  says,  in  the 
Dunciad, 

"  As,  one  by  one,  at  dread  Medea's  strain, 
The  sickening  stars  fade  off  the  ethereal  plain." 


POPE.  421 

And  not  seldom  he  is  satisfied  with  the  music  of  the 
verse  without  much  regard  to  fitness  of  imagery  ;  in  the 
"  Essay  on  Man,"  for  example  :  — 

"  Passions,  like  elements,  though  born  to  fight, 
Yet,  mixed  and  softened,  in  his  work  unite; 
These  't  is  enough  to  temper  and  employ; 
But  what  composes  man  can  man  destroy? 
Suffice  that  Reason  keep  to  Nature's  road, 
Subject,  compound  them,  follow  her  and  God. 
Love,  Hope,  and  Joy,  fair  Pleasure's  smiling  train, 
Hate,  Fear,  and  Grief,  the  family  of  Pain, 
These,  mixed  with  Art,  and  to  due  bounds  confined, 
Make  and  maintain  the  balance  of  the  mind." 

Here  reason  is  represented  as  an  apothecary  compound 
ing  pills  of  "  pleasure's  smiling  train  "  and  the  "  family 
of  pain."  And  in  the  Moral  Essays, 

"  Know  God  and  Nature  only  are  the  same ; 
In  man  the  judgment  shoots  at  flying  game, 
A  bird  of  passage,  gone  as  soon  as  found, 
Now  in  the  moon,  perhaps,  now  under  ground." 

The  "judgment  shooting  at  flying  game "  is  an  odd 
image  enough  ;  but  I  think  a  bird  of  passage,  now  in 
the  moon  and  now  under  ground,  could  be  found  no 
where  —  out  of  Goldsmith's  Natural  History,  perhaps. 
An  epigrammatic  expression  will  also  tempt  him  into 
saying  something  without  basis  in  truth,  as  where  he 
ranks  together  "  Macedonia's  madman  and  the  Swede," 
and  says  that  neither  of  them  "  looked  forward  farther 
than  his  nose,"  a  slang  phrase  which  may  apply  well 
enough  to  Charles  XII.,  but  certainly  not  to  the  pupil 
of  Aristotle,  who  showed  himself  capable  of  a  largo 
political  forethought.  So,  too,  the  rhyme,  if  correct,  is 
a  sufficient  apology  for  want  of  propriety  in  phrase,  as 
whei-e  he  makes  "  Socrates  bleed." 

But  it  is  in  his  Moral  Essays  and  parts  of  his  Satires 
that  Pope  deserves  the  praise  which  he  himself  do 
sired :  — 


422  POPE. 

"  Happily  to  steer 

From  grave  to  gay,  from  lively  to  severe, 
Correct  with  spirit,  eloquent  with  ease, 
Intent  to  reason,  or  polite  to  please." 

Here  Pope  must  be  allowed  to  have  established  a  style 
of  his  own,  in  which  he  is  without  a  rival.  One  can 
open  upon  wit  and  epigram  at  any  page. 

"  Behold,  if  Fortune  or  a  mistress  frowns, 
Some  plunge  in  business,  other  shave  their  crowns ; 
To  ease  the  soul  of  one  oppressive  weight, 
This  quits  an  empire,  that  embroils  a  state; 
The  same  adust  complexion  has  impelled, 
Charles  to  the  convent,  Philip  to  the  field." 

Indeed,  I  think  one  gets  a  little  tired  of  the  invariable 
this  set  off  by  the  inevitable  that,  and  wishes  antithesis 
would  let  him  have  a  little  quiet  now  and  then.  In  the 
first  couplet,  too,  the  conditional  "  frown  "  would  have 
been  more  elegant.  But  taken  as  detached  passages, 
how  admirably  the  different  characters  are  drawn,  so 
admirably  that  half  the  verses  have  become  proverbial. 
This  of  Addison  will  bear  reading  again  :  — 

"  Peace  to  all  such :  but  were  there  one  whose  fires 
True  genius  kindles  and  fair  fame  inspires; 
Blest  with  each  talent  and  each  art  to  please, 
And  born  to  write,  converse,  and  live  with  ease; 
Should  such  a  man,  too  fond  to  rule  alone, 
Bear  like  the  Turk  no  brother  near  the  throne, 
View  him  with  scornful  yet  with  jealous  eyes, 
And  hate  for  arts  that  caused  himself  to  rise, 
Damn  with  faint -praise,  assent  with  civil  leer, 
And,  without  sneering,  teach  the  rest  to  sneer; 
Willing  to  wound  and  yet  afraid  to  strike, 
Just  hint  a  fault  and  hesitate  dislike, 
Alike  reserved  to  blame  or  to  commend, 
A  timorous  foe  and  a  suspicious  friend; 
Dreading  e'en  fools,  by  flatterei-s  besieged, 
And  so  obliging  that  he  ne'er  obliged; 
Like  Cato  give  his  little  Senate  laws, 
And  sit  attentive  to  his  own  applause, 
While  wits  and  templars  every  sentence  raise, 
And  wonder  with  a  foolish  face  of  praise;  — 


POPE.  423 

.     Who  but  must  laugh  if  such  a  man  there  be? 
Who  would  not  weep  if  Attlcus  were  he?" 

With  the  exception  of  the  somewhat  technical  image 
in  the  second  verse  of  Fame  blowing  the  fire  of  genius, 
which  too  much  puts  us  in  mind  of  the  frontispieces  of 
the  day,  surely  nothing  better  of  its  kind  was  ever  writ 
ten.  How  applicable  it  was  to  Addison  I  shall  consider 
in  another  place.  As  an  accurate  intellectual  observer 
and  describer  of  personal  weaknesses,  Pope  stands  by 
himself  in  English  verse. 

In  his  epistle  on  the  characters  of  women,  no  one  who 
has  ever  known  a  noble  woman,  nay,  I  should  almost 
say  no  one  who  ever  had  a  mother  or  sister,  will  find 
much  to  please  him.  The  climax  of  his  praise  rather 
degrades  than  elevates. 

"  0,  blest  in  temper,  whose  unclouded  ray 
Can  make  to-morrow  cheerful  as  to-day, 
She  who  can  love  a  sister's  charms,  or  hear 
Sighs  for  a  daughter  with  unwounded  ear, 
She  who  ne'er  answers  till  a  husband  cools, 
Or,  if  she  rules  him,  never  shows  she  rules, 
Charms  by  accepting,  by  submitting  sways, 
Yet  has  her  humor  most  when  she  obeys ; 
Lets  fops  or  fortune  fly  which  way  they  will, 
Disdains  all  loss  of  tickets  or  codille, 
Spleen,  vapors,  or  smallpox,  above  them  all 
And  mistress  of  herself,  though  china  fall." 

The  last  line  is  very  witty  and  pointed,  — but  consider 
what  an  ideal  of  womanly  nobleness  he  must  have  had, 
who  praises  his  heroine  for  not  being  jealous  of  her 
daughter.  Addison,  in  commending  Pope's  "  Essay  on 
Criticism,"  says,  speaking  of  us  "  who  live  in  the  latter 
ages  of  the  world  "  :  "We  have  little  else  to  do  left  us 
but  to  represent  the  common  sense  of  mankind,  in  more 
strong,  more  beautiful,  or  more  uncommon  lights."  I 
think  he  has  here  touched  exactly  the  point  of  Pope's 
merit,  and,  in  doing  so,  tacitly  excludes  him  from  the 


424  POPE. 

position  of  poet,  in  the  highest  sense.  Take  two  of 
Jeremy  Taylor's  prose  sentences  about  the  Countess  of 
Carbery,  the  lady  in  Milton's  "  Comns  "  :  "  The  religion 
of  this  excellent  lady  was  of  another  constitution  :  it 
took  root  downward  in  humility,  and  brought  forth  fruit 
upward  in  the  substantial  graces  of  a  Christian,  in 
charity  and  justice,  in  chastity  and  modesty,  in  fair 
friendships  and  sweetness  of  society.  .  .  .  And  though 
she  had  the  greatest  judgment,  and  the  greatest  experi 
ence  of  things  and  persons  I  ever  yet  knew  in  a  person 
of  her  youth  and  sex  and  circumstances,  yet,  as  if  she 
knew  nothing  of  it,  she  had  the  meanest  opinion  of  her 
self,  and  like  a  fair  taper,  when  she  shined  to  all  the 
room,  yet  round  about  her  station  she  had  cast  a  shadow 
and  a  cloud,  and  she  shined  to  everybody  but  herself." 
This  is  poetry,  though  not  in  verse.  The  plays  of  the 
elder  dramatists  are  not  without  examples  of  weak  and 
vile  women,  but  they  ai'e  not  without  noble  ones  either. 
Take  these  verses  of  Chapman,  for  example  :  — 

"  Let  no  man  value  at  a  little  price 
A  virtuous  woman's  counsel :  her  winged  spirit 
Is  feathered  oftentimes  with  noble  words 
And,  like  her  beauty.  ravishing  and  pure; 
The  weaker  body,  still  the  stronger  soul. 
O,  what  a  treasure  is  a  virtuous  wife, 
Discreet  and  loving.     Not  one  gift  on  earth 
Makes  a  man's  life  so  nighly  bound  to  heaven. 
She  gives  him  double  forces  to  endnrc 
And  to  enjoy,  being  one  with  him, 
Feeling  his  joys  and  griefs  with  equal  sense: 
If  he  fetch  sighs,  she  draws  her  breath  as  short; 
If  he  lament,  she  melts  herself  in  tears; 
If  he  be  glad,  she  triumphs;  if  he  stir, 
She  moves  his  way,  in  all  things  his  sweet  ape, 
Himself  divinely  varied  without  change. 
All  store  without  her  leaves  a  man  but  poor, 
And  with  her  poverty  is  exceeding  store." 

Pope  in  the  character  I  have  read  was  drawing  his  ideal 
woman,  for  he  says  at  the  end  that  she  shall  be  his 


POPE.  425 

muse.  The  sentiments  are  those  of  a  boiirgeols  and  of 
the  back  parlor,  more  than  of  the  poet  and  the  muse's 
bower.  A  man's  mind  is  known  by  the  company  it 
keeps. 

Now  it  is  very  possible  that  the  women  of  Pope's 
time  were  as  bad  as  they  could  be ;  but  if  God  made 
poets  for  anything,  it  was  to  keep  alive  the  traditions  of 
the  pure,  the  holy,  and  the  beautiful.  I  grant  the  in 
fluence  of  the  age,  but  there  is  a  sense  in  which  the 
poet  is  of  no  age,  and  Beauty,  driven  from  every  other 
home,  will  never  be  an  outcast  and  a  wanderer,  while 
there  is  a  poet's  nature  left,  will  never  fail  of  the  tribute 
at  least  of  a  song.  It  seems  to  me  that  Pope  had  a 
sense  of  the  neat  rather  than  of  the  beautiful.  His 
nature  delighted  more  in  detecting  the  blemish  than  in 
enjoying  the  charm. 

However  great  his  merit  in  expression,  I  think  it  im 
possible  that  a  true  poet  could  have  written  such  a 
satire  as  the  Dunciad,  which  is  even  nastier  than  it  is 
witty.  It  is  filthy  even  in  a  filthy  age,  and  Swift  him 
self  could  not  have  gone  beyond  some  parts  of  it.  One's 
mind  needs  to  be  sprinkled  with  some  disinfecting  fluid 
after  reading  it.  I  do  not  remember  that  any  other 
poet  ever  made  poverty  a  crime.  And  it  is  wholly  with 
out  discrimination.  De  Foe  is  set  in  the  pillory  forever; 
and  George  Wither,  the  author  of  that  charming  poem, 
"  Fair  Virtue,"  classed  among  the  dunces.  And  was  it 
not  in  this  age  that  loose  Dick  Steele  paid  his  wife  the 
finest  compliment  ever  paid  to  woman,  when  he  said 
"that  to  love  her  was  a  liberal  education"] 

Even  in  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock,"  the  fancy  is  that  of 
a  wit  rather  than  of  a  poet.  It  might  not  be  just  to 
compare  his  Sylphs  with  the  Fairies  of  Shakespeare; 
but  contrast  the  kind  of  fancy  shown  in  the  poem 
with  that  of  Draytou's  Nymphidia,  for  example.  I  will 


426  POPE. 

give  one  stanza  of  it,  describing  the  palace  of  the 
Fairy :  — 

"  The  walls  of  spider's  legs  were  made, 
"Well  mortised,  and  finely  J;ud; 
( He  was  the  master  of  his  trade 
It  curiously  that  builded:) 
The  windows  of  the  eyes  of  cats, 
And,  for  the  roof,  instead  of  slats 
*T  is  covered  with  the  skins  of  bats, 
With  moonshine  that  are  gilded." 

In  the  last  line  the  eye  and  fancy  of  a  poet  are  recog 
nized. 

Personally  we  know  more  about  Pope  than  about  any 
of  our  poets.  He  kept  no  secrets  about  himself.  If  lie 
did  not  let  the  cat  out  of  the  bag,  he  always  contrived 
to  give  her  tail  a  wrench  so  that  we  might  know  she 
was  there.  In  spite  of  the  savageness  of  his  satires,  his 
natural  disposition  seems  to  have  been  an  amiable  one, 
and  his  character  as  an  author  was  as  purely  factitious 
as  his  style.  Dr.  Johnson  appears  to  have  suspected  his 
sincerity ;  but  artifice  more  than  insincerity  lay  at  the 
basis  of  his  character.  I  think  that  there  was  very 
little  real  malice  in  him,  and  that  his  "  evil  was  wrought 
from  want  of  thought."  When  Dennis  was  old  and 
poor,  he  wrote  a  prologue  for  a  play  to  be  acted  for  his 
benefit.  Except  Addison,  he  numbered  among  his  friends 
the  most  illustrious  men  of  his  time. 

The  correspondence  of  Pope  is,  on  the  whole,  less  in 
teresting  than  that  of  any  other  eminent  English  poet, 
except  that  of  Southey,  and  their  letters  have  the  same 
fault  of  being  labored  compositions.  Southey's  are,  on 
the  whole,  the  more  agreeable  of  the  two,  for  they 
inspire  one  (as  Pope's  certainly  do  not)  with  a  sincere 
respect  for  the  character  of  the  writer.  Pope's  are 
altogether  too  full  of  the  proclamation  of  his  own 
virtues  to  be  pleasant  reading.  It  is  plain  that  they 


POPE.  427 

were  mostly  addressed  to  the  public,  perhaps  even  to 
posterity.  But  letters,  however  carefully  drilled  to  be 
circumspect,  are  sure  to  blab,  and  those  of  Pope  leave 
in  the  reader's  mind  an  unpleasant  feeling  of  circum 
spection,  —  of  an  attempt  to  look  as  an  eminent  literary  t 
character  should  rather  than  as  the  man  really  was. 
They  have  the  unnatural  constraint  of  a  man  in  full 
dress  sitting  for  his  portrait  and  endeavoring  to  look  his 
best.  We  never  catch  him,  if  he  can  help  it,  at  un 
awares.  Among  all  Pope's  correspondents,  Swift  shows 
in  the  most  dignified  and,  one  is  tempted  to  say,  the 
most  amiable  light.  It  is  creditable  to  the  Dean  that 
the  letters  which  Pope  addressed  to  him  are  by  far  the 
most  simple  and  straightforward  of  any  that  he  wrote. 
No  sham  could  encounter  those  terrible  eyes  hi  Dublin 
without  wincing.  I  think,  on  the  whole,  that  a  revision 
of  judgment  would  substitute  "  discomforting  conscious 
ness  of  the  public  "  for  "  insincerity  "  in  judging  Pope's 
character  by  his  letters.  He  could  not  shake  off  the 
habits  of  the  author,  and  never,  or  almost  never,  in 
prose,  acquired  that  knack  of  seeming  carelessness  that 
makes  Walpole's  elaborate  compositions  such  agreeable 
reading.  Pope  would  seem  to  have  kept  a  common 
place-book  of  phrases  proper  to  this  or  that  occasion ; 
and  he  transfers  a  compliment,  a  fine  moral  sentiment, 
nay,  even  sometimes  a  burst  of  passionate  ardor,  from 
one  correspondent  to  another,  with  the  most  cold-blooded 
impartiality.  Were  it  not  for  this  curious  economy  of 
his,  no  one  could  read  his  letters  to  Lady  Wortley  Mon 
tague  without  a  conviction  that  they  were  written  by  a 
lover.  Indeed,  I  think  nothing  short  of  the  spretce  in- 
juria  formce  will  account  for  (though  it  will  not  excuse) 
the  savage  vindictiveness  he  felt  and  showed  towards 
her.  It  may  be  suspected  also  that  the  bitterness  of 
caste  added  gall  to  his  resentment.  His  enemy  wore 


428  POPE. 


that  impenetrable  armor  of  superior  rank  which  ren 
dered  her  indifference  to  his  shafts  the  more  provoking 
that  it  was  unaffected.  Even  for  us  his  satire  loses  its 
sting  when  we  reflect  that  it  is  not  in  human  nature  for  a 
woman  to  have  had  two  such  utterly  irreconcilable  charac 
ters  as  those  of  Lady  Mary  before  and  after  her  quarrel 
with  the  poet.  In  any  view  of  Pope's  conduct  in  this 
affair,  there  is  an  ill  savor  in  his  attempting  to  degrade 
a  woman  whom  he  had  once  made  sacred  with  his  love. 
Spenser  touches  the  right  chord  when  he  says  of  the 
Rosalind  who  had  rejected  him, 

"  Not,  then,  to  her,  that  scorned  thing  so  base, 
But  to  myself  the  blame,  that  lookt  so  high; 
Yet  so  much  grace  let  her  vouchsafe  to  grant 
To  simple  swain,  sith  her  I  may  not  love, 
Yet  that  I  may  her  honor  paruvant 
And  praise  her  worth,  though  far  my  wit  above; 
Such  grace  shall  be  some  guerdon  of  the  grief 
And  long  affliction  which  I  have  endured." 

In  his  correspondence  with  Aaron  Hill,  Pope,  pushed 
to  the  wall,  appears  positively  mean.  He  *  vainly  en 
deavors  to  show  that  his  personalities  had  all  been  writ 
ten  in  the  interests  of  literature  and  morality,  and  from 
no  selfish  motive.  But  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  Theo 
bald  would  have  been  deemed  worthy  of  his  disgustful 
pre-eminence  but  for  the  manifest  superiority  of  his 
edition  of  Shakespeare,  or  that  Addison  would  have 
been  so  adroitly  disfigured  unless  through  wounded  self- 
love.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  the  resentful  shame  which 
Pope  mxist  have  felt  when  Addison  so  almost  contempt 
uously  disavowed  all  complicity  in  his  volunteer  defence 
of  Goto  in  a  brutal  assault  on  Dennis.  Pope  had  done 
a  mean  thing  to  propitiate  a  man  whose  critical  judg 
ment  he  dreaded  ;  and  the  great  man,  instead  of  thank 
ing  him,  had  resented  his  interference  as  impertinent. 
In  the  whole  portrait  of  Atticus  one  cannot  help  feeling 


POPE.  429 

that  Pope's  satire  is  not  founded  on  knowledge,  but 
rather  on  what  his  own  sensitive  suspicion  divined  of 
the  opinions  of  one  whose  expressed  preferences  in  po 
etry  implied  a  condemnation  of  the  very  grounds  of  the 
satirist's  own  popularity.  We  shall  not  so  easily  give 
up  the  purest  and  most  dignified  figure  of  that  some 
what  vulgar  generation,  who  ranks  with  Sidney  and 
Spenser,  as  one  of  the  few  perfect  gentlemen  in  our  lit 
erary  annals.  A  man  who  could  command  the  unswerv 
ing  loyalty  of  honest  and  impulsive  Dick  Steele  could 
not  have  been  a  coward  or  a  backbiter.  The  only  justi 
fication  alleged  by  Pope  was  of  the  flimsiest  kind,  namely, 
that  Addison  regretted  the  introduction  of  the  sylphs  in 
the  second  edition  of  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock,"  saying  that 
the  poem  was  merum  sal  before.  Let  any  one  ask  him 
self  how  he  likes  an  author's  emendations  of  any  poem 
to  which  his  ear  had  adapted  itself  in  its  former  shape, 
and  he  will  hardly  think  it  needful  to  charge  Addison 
with  any  mean  motive  for  his  conservatism  in  this  mat 
ter.  One  or  two  of  Pope's  letters  are  so  good  as  to 
make  us  regret  that  he  did  not  oftener  don  the  dressing- 
gown  and  slippers  in  his  correspondence.  One  in  par 
ticular,  to  Lord  Burlington,  describing  a  journey  on 
horseback  to  Oxford  with  Lintot  the  bookseller,  is  full 
of  a  lightsome  humor  worthy  of  Cowper,  almost  worthy 
of  Gray. 

Joseph  Warton,  in  summing  up  at  the  end  of  his 
essay  on  the  genius  and  writings  of  Pope,  says  that  the 
largest  part  of  his  works  "  is  of  the  didactic,  moral,  and 
satiric  ;  and,  consequently,  not  of  the  most  poetic  species 
of  poetry ;  whence  it  is  manifest  that  good  sense  and 
judgment  were  his  characteristical  excellences  rather  than 
fancy  and  invention."  It  is  plain  that  in  any  strict 
definition  there  can  be  only  one  kind  of  poetry,  and 
that  what  Warton  really  meant  to  say  was  that  Pope 


430  POPE. 

was  not  a  poet  at  all.  This,  I  think,  is  shown  by  what 
Johnson  says  in  his  "  Life  of  Pope,"  though  he  does  not 
name  Warton.  The  dispute  on  this  point  went  on  with 
occasional  lulls  for  more  than  a  half-century  after  War- 
ton's  death.  It  was  renewed  with  peculiar  acrimony 
when  the  Rev.  W.  L.  Bowles  diffused  and  confused  War- 
ton's  critical  opinions  in  his  own  peculiarly  helpless  way 
in  editing  a  new  edition  of  Pope  in  1806.  Bowles  en 
tirely  mistook  the  functions  of  an  editor,  and  maladroitly 
entangled  his  judgment  of  the  poetry  with  his  estimate 
of  the  author's  character.*  Thirteen  years  later,  Camp 
bell,  in  his  "Specimens,"  controverted  Mr.  Bowles's  esti 
mate  of  Pope's  character  and  position,  both  as  man  and 
poet.  Mr.  Bowles  replied  in  a  letter  to  Campbell  on 
what  he  called  "  the  invariable  principles  of  poetry." 
This  letter  was  in  turn  somewhat  sharply  criticised  by 
Gilchrist  in  the  Quarterly  Review.  Mr.  Bowles  made  an 
angry  and  unmannerly  retort,  among  other  things  charg 
ing  Gilchrist  with  the  crime  of  being  a  tradesman's  son, 
whereupon  the  affair  became  what  they  call  on  the 
frontier  a  free  fight,  in  which  Gilchrist,  Roscoe,  the  elder 
Disraeli,  and  Byron  took  part  with  equal  relish,  though 
with  various  fortune.  The  last  shot,  in  what  had  grown 
into  a  thirty  years'  war,  between  the  partisans  of  what 
was  called  the  Old  School  of  poetry  and  those  of  the 
New,  was  fired  by  Bowles  in  1826.  Bowles,  in  losing 
his  temper,  lost  also  what  little  logic  he  had,  and  though, 
in  a  vague  way,  sesthetically  right,  contrived  always  to 
be  argumentatively  wrong.  Anger  made  worse  confu 
sion  in  a  brain  never  very  clear,  and  he  had  neither  the 

*  Bowles's  Sonnets,  wellnigh  forgotten  now,  did  more  than  his  con 
troversial  writings  for  the  cause  he  advocated.  Their  influence  upon 
the  coming  generation  was  great  (greater  than  we  can  well  account 
for)  and  beneficial.  Coleridge  tells  us  that  he  made  forty  copies  of 
them  while  at  Christ's  Hospital.  Wordsworth's  prefaces  first  made 
imagination  the  true  test  of  poetry,  in  its  more  modern  sense.  But 
they  drew  little  notice  till  later. 


POPE.  431 

scholarship  nor  the  critical  faculty  for  a  vigorous  expo 
sition  of  his  own  thesis.  Never  was  wilder  hitting  than 
his,  and  he  laid  himself  open  to  dreadful  punishment,  espe 
cially  from  Byron,  whose  two  letters  are  masterpieces  of 
polemic  prose.  Bowles  most  happily  exemplified  in  his 
own  pamphlets  what  was  really  the  turning-point  of  the 
whole  controversy  (though  all  the  combatants  more  or 
less  lost  sight  of  it  or  never  saw  it),  namely,  that  with 
out  clearness  and  terseness  there  could  be  no  good  writ 
ing,  Avhether  in  prose  or  verse  ;  in  other  words  that, 
while  precision  of  phrase  presupposes  lucidity  of  thought, 
yet  good  writing  is  an  art  as  Avell  as  a  gift.  Byron  alone 
saw  clearly  that  here  was  the  true  knot  of  the  question, 
though,  as  his  object  was  mainly  mischief,  he  was  not 
careful  to  loosen  it.  The  sincerity  of  Byron's  admira 
tion  of  Pope  has  been,  it  seems  to  me,  too  hastily 
doubted.  What  he  admired  in  him  was  that  patience 
in  careful  finish  which  he  felt  to  be  wanting  in  himself 
and  in  most  of  his  contemporaries.  Pope's  assailants 
went  so  far  as  to  make  a  defect  of  what,  rightly  consid 
ered,  was  a  distinguished  merit,  though  the  amount  of 
it  was  exaggerated.  The  weak  point  in  the  case  was 
that  his  nicety  concerned  itself  wholly  about  the  phrase, 
leaving  the  thought  to  be  as  fault}r  as  it  would,  and  that 
it  seldom  extended  beyond  the  couplet,  often  not  beyond 
a  single  verse.  His  serious  poetry,  therefore,  at  its  best, 
is  a  succession  of  loosely  strung  epigrams,  and  no  poet 
more  often  than  he  makes  the  second  line  of  the  couplet 
a  mere  trainbearer  to  the  first.  His  more  ambitious  works 
may  be  defined  as  careless  thinking  carefully  versified. 
Lessing  was  one  of  the  first  to  see  this,  and  accordingly 
he  tells  us  that  "  his  great,  I  will  not  say  greatest,  merit 
lay  in  what  we  call  the  mechanic  of  poetry."  *  Lessing, 

*  Briefe  die  neueste  Litteratur  betreffend,  1759,  II.  Brief.  See  also 
his  more  elaborate  criticism  of  the  "  Essay  on  Man"  (Pope  ein  Meta- 
physiker),  1755. 


432  POPE. 

with  his  usual  insight,  parenthetically  qualifies  his  state 
ment  ;  for  where  Pope,  as  in  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock," 
found  a  subject  exactly  level  with  his  genius,  he  was 
able  to  make  what,  taken  for  all  in  all,  is  the  most  per 
fect  poem  in  the  language. 

It  will  hardly  be  questioned  that  the  man  who  writes 
what  is  still  piquant  and  rememberable,  a  century  and 
a  quarter  after  his  death,  was  a  man  of  genius.  But 
there  are  two  modes  of  uttering  such  things  as  cleave  to 
the  memory  of  mankind.  They  may  be  said  or  sung. 
I  do  not  think  that  Pope's  verse  anywhere  sings,  but  it 
should  seem  that  the  abiding  presence  of  fancy  in  his 
best  work  forbids  his  exclusion  from  the  rank  of  poet. 
The  atmosphere  in  which  he  habitually  dwelt  was  an 
essentially  prosaic  one,  the  language  habitual  to  him 
was  that  of  conversation  and  society,  so  that  he  lacked 
the  help  of  that  fresher  dialect  which  seems  like  inspira 
tion  in  the  elder  poets.  His  range  of  associations  was 
of  that  narrow  kind  which  is  always  vulgar,  whether 
it  be  found  in  the  village  or  the  court.  Certainly  he 
has  not  the  force  and  majesty  of  Dry  den  in  his  better 
moods,  but  he  has  a  grace,  a  finesse,  an  art  of  being 
pungent,  a  sensitiveness  to  impressions,  that  would  in 
cline  us  to  rank  him  with  Voltaire  (whom  in  many  ways 
he  so  much  resembles),  as  an  author  with  whom  the 
gift  of  writing  was  primary,  and  that  of  verse  secondary. 
No  other  poet  that  I  remember  ever  wrote  prose  which 
is  so  purely  prose  as  his  ;  and  yet,  in  any  impartial  crit 
icism,  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock  "  sets  him  even  as  a  poet 
far  above  many  men  more  largely  endowed  with  poetic 
feeling  and  insight  than  he. 

A  great  deal  must  be  allowed  to  Pope  for  the  age  in 
which  he  lived,  and  not  a  little,  I  think,  for  the  influence 
of  Swift.  In  his  own  province  he  still  stands  unapproach 
ably  alone.  If  to  be  the  greatest  satirist  of  individual 


POPE.  433 

men,  rather  than  of  human  nature,  if  to  be  the  highest 
expression  which  the  life  of  the  court  and  the  ball-room 
has  ever  found  in  verse,  if  to  have  added  more  phrases 
to  our  language  than  any  other  but  Shakespeare,  if  to 
have  charmed  four  generations  make  a  man  a  great  poet, 
—  then  he  is  one.  He  was  the  chief  founder  of  an  arti 
ficial  style  of  writing,  which  in  his  hands  was  living  and 
powerful,  because  he  used  it  to  express  artificial  modes 
of  thinking  and  an  artificial  state  of  society.  Measured 
by  any  high  standard  of  imagination,  he  will  be  found 
wanting ;  tried  by  any  test  of  wit,  he  is  unrivalled. 


THE  END. 


Cambridge  :  Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelow,  and  Company. 


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